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Microsoft Ends Mainstream Support For Windows 7
jones_supa writes The mainstream support of Microsoft Windows 7 [ended Monday]. The operating system leaving mainstream support means no more platform updates, no new features, and end of free support. Windows 7 will now enter extended support, which means that security updates will keep coming, and support will be offered for charge. The final end of support for Windows 7 will be reached January 14, 2020.
Is anyone nostalgic for Windows 7?
I'm not nostalgic for Windows 7.... I still run it! On all of our networked computers.
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
I plan to switch to it real soon now.
Some people are even now upgrading to Win 7
I wouldn't touch 8.x with a 3 metre resident of Warsaw
I feel like windows makes one-bad, one-good alternating OSs because they need to make the monster and then the savior. So like many others, I hope windows 10 does everyone a solid.
which is why we just finished out our Vista roll-out last week!
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Which is about 5 years longer than any version of Android older than 5.0 will get them.
Best Slashdot Co
IMHO, the best versions of Windows are (in order): 7, XP, and 95 OSR2. Note that each of these was a significant performance enhancement over both their respective predecessor and successor. Microsoft just can't let good enough be good enough; they always gotta screw up a winning formula. I do give them props for the longevity of XP; I coasted through Vista without ever touching it once.
I'm sure they are hoping this will push people into Microsoft-branded cloud services.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Your "first post" shipped late, much like many of the advertised features of Microsoft operating systems.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Windows 7 like XP does what we need, with a familiar UI.
As an office we are going to skip 8/8.X - its not a bad OS, my parents adapted once I installed Start8 (yes I know there are free apps out there).
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
You can try 10 Technical Preview. It is Windows 8.1 with Metro condensed to a start menu. It still has some full-screen hijacking apps and tons of bloat from Bing and the "App" Store. This might be ok for some people but it sounds like Microsoft is going down the wrong road for those of us that like a clean, controlled, and predictable system. Linux may be the answer for many if it has the right program support, but it's possible that 7 is the last sane OS from Microsoft.
I had a university as a client last year and they had at least one Windows 3.1 system still in operation in a research capacity. XP is still all over the place.
Sure, if we could disable all of the crud they piled on top, the core of Windows 8 is relatively good, as it's efficient and stable. But the crud on top is really, really irritating, and bloated, which is why Windows 7 looks so good in comparison. My PC that ran find in Win7 became almost unusable with Win8. I'm hoping someone writes an un-installer that rips our the crud, like there was for Vista.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
the full screen apps are simply windows on the desktop now, resize and you are fine. its not like in 8 where desktop and metro are 2 different states
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'm still on XP, mainly because the box it's running on is almost 10 years old and running a single-core processor. I have other priorities for my money than building a new box just so I can run a newer OS. Not that I wouldn't like a faster, multi-core processor, mind you, but I just can't justify the expense when I have other things I'd rather spend the money on before that. Have to build it myself, too, no pre-built computers, and nothing non-upgradable like a NUC, either. I suppose Win 7 would run on this box OK, but I also don't want to have to go through all the hassle of upgrading and then having to re-install everything I've got installed right now. It works fine the way it is, it does everything I need it to do, and frankly I spend more time outside the house doing active things than I used to spend inside staring at a monitor and have benefitted thereby.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is ridiculous. Win7 is all I sell on new PCs at my shop. Nobody wants 8.1. No business with a brain rolled it out. They damn well better extend support past 2020 as well because our business just got rid of XP needlessly on single purpose desktops.
Microsoft made a terrible mistake in allowing enterprises to remain on XP so long and thus allowing this culture of not upgrading to take place.
"Allowing"? Good one!
If Microsoft had tried to force companies to migrate to Vista, we would have seen 2007 as finally the year of "Linux on the Desktop".
Software vendors need to get a grip on their role in the ecosystem. They serve us, not the other way around. When people still run XP (hell, people still run 95!), that should tell Microsoft everything it needs to know about the viability of continuing its current trend toward forcing rapid unwanted change on people.
Welcome to IT.
Leave you dignity and expertise at the door. Do everything as cheap as possible in the short term.
You are a cost to the company, with nothing of value to contribute to the core business, be glad we took pity on your and gave you a job.
Sounds familiar?
There should be constant updates to Windows? This might work if you're a 5 person shop, but what if you're managing the IT resources of a 10,000 person company? Upgrading Windows means you need to make sure you're not breaking a business-critical application. If your Windows update will break this, you need to either 1) upgrade that application first, 2) migrate to a compatible application, or 3) somehow run this application in a VM. This might be a challenge if there is one application to consider, but when your organization gets large, there might be dozens of these applications to consider. Then there are employee training issues to consider. (Especially if you were moving to Windows 8's new UI.) The IT manager who just says "we're updating to the new version of Windows and too bad if it causes issues" will quickly find his users storming his office demanding answers as to why critical business systems don't work anymore. I suspect said IT manager would also quickly find himself searching for a new job.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Finally
Only Security patches from here on out.. not Mucky Muck.. "Feature Enhancements" or "Rubble" updates or "Video Card drivers"
Golden Edition
We should all be good for the next Thirteen years or so
In practice you needed a Pentium 2 with 64MB RAM to run Windows 98 properly.
This made me think how in the old days, software minimum requirements often described the bare minimum hardware with what the software kinda-sorta could start. :) These days we don't see that as much, but defining requirements is still tricky: for example you can't really meaningfully slap there "2GHz CPU or faster", because the work done per clock cycle has improved tremendously. Describing the GPU requirement is problematic too, because if you say "GTX460 or faster", some people can have hard time weighing how fast a GTX460 exactly was, and what was the performance of various chips that came after that.
You know your new OS is awful when people "upgrade" to the previous version.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
"Good luck with pushing 8 to the corporate world... it's about as adoptable as an angry badger with syphilis."
Don't you just hate it when people are excessively positive about Microsoft?
I just realized that my OEM license won't transfer to my new computer and I couldn't easily find a copy of Windows 7, so for the first time I just decided to go without. I have Windows 8 on a laptop and there's no way I'd ever buy a copy of that, if it didn't come preloaded. It's just awful.
This marks the end of the dual-boot era for me. It's Linux all the way now. Great job Microsoft!
Windows 8.1 is just ridiculous. It hardly meets the needs of business at all, too many problems. That silly touch interface is just insane.
Microsoft is trying hard to jam Windows 8.1 and soon Windows 10 down our throats, but XP was clearly the most powerful OS that MS has made, and Windows 7 is a barely usable but certainly much less convenient OS than XP.
Which completely explains why there are so many computers in the world still running and being used productively with XP.
Hundreds of millions of them.
.
XP will go down in history as the best OS made. Ever.
Win2k was better.