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Microsoft Revises Windows 7, 8 On Skylake Cut-Off Date To 2018 (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a ZDNet story: Microsoft is softening its stance on how long and how completely it will continue to support Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users running Skylake-based devices. Instead of cutting off full, extended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on Skylake on July 17, 2017, Microsoft will now guarantee full extended support to July 17, 2018. Microsoft also tightened up the wording as to what kinds of security updates Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users will get once that date comes. "After July 2018, all critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for Skylake systems until extended support ends for Windows 7, January 14, 2020 and Windows 8.1 on January 10, 2023," it said. Many users weren't pleased with Microsoft's initial decision. And it appears OEMs weren't thrilled about it, either. Adrienne Mueller, Product Manager at Lenovo said earlier this month, "The thought here is that Microsoft is really just pushing customers to move to Windows 10. A lot of reactions from our customers...is can we influence Microsoft and tell them they're not ready to transition and try to get them to prolong support on that? We've tried, and Microsoft's not really willing to do that."
But we will still push the auto update hard so all it's takes is one click and then you have 10.
And provide all updates (not selected updates) for Windows 7 on all CPUs until 2020, as previously made commitments have stated.
Windows 7 is Windows XP of the enterprise environment. No one upgrading to another version of Windows any time soon.
What does Microsoft have to do with support for a CPU...
I'm pretty sure I can install Windows 98 even on the newest hardware sold today, so what would prevent me from using Windows 7/8 with a skylake CPU... This just doesn't make sense to me.
Windows 10 is the new Vista [...]
Uh, seriously? Vista required new hardware to run and annoyed the hell out of users with its security features to protect users from the Internet. Win10 runs fine on the Vista-compatible hardware that I bought in 2007 and it's business as usual with desktop applications.
when MS releases an OS that isn't a pile of pure dren, I'll upgrade from 7 on my gaming rig. Otherwise, Ubuntu it is.
It makes sense why Microsoft is pushing Windows 10. It's expensive to provide security and bug fix updates for an OS, let alone three of them. By the time of the EOL, Microsoft isn't bringing in much revenue on that OS. They're losing money, and it makes sense why they would want to EOL Windows 7 and 8.1 as soon as possible. Clearly they want to only have one version of Windows going forward, Windows 10. They will only have to support one version of Windows and the revenue won't drop off because it will continue to be shipped with new computers. Had Microsoft been honest and openly admitted this, I think many people would understand and at least appreciate the honesty. It's not to say they would have wanted to switch to Windows 10, but it would have bought Microsoft some goodwill with users.
Being forthcoming with official information about the telemetry and implementing a way to altogether disable it on all editions of Windows 10 would have improved the reception by end users. The most damaging thing has been the deceptive attempts to forcibly switch Windows 7 and 8.1 systems to Windows 10. Even pushing it as a recommended update is deceptive to many users who have been taught they need to install all of those updates or their computers will be vulnerable to malware.
All the deception has severely damaged the Windows 10 brand. They abandoned Internet Explorer because the name had acquired a toxic reputation for a lack of security, despite great improvements in recent versions. Internet Explorer had a toxic reputation and Windows 10 is well on its way to having every bit as toxic of a reputation. Microsoft may have undermined their own goals by pushing Windows 10 so aggressively.
I have an Asus eeePC netbook that came with Windows XP.
Vista? Too slow. Unusable.
7? Runs nice.
8/8.1? Resolution is too small.
10? Runs nice.
Windows Vista wasn't compatible with almost any hardware. Windows 10 is compatible with almost everything made in the last 7 years.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Oh please. It's basically impossible for MS to "undermine their own goals"; it doesn't matter how badly they screw up, people are going to continue to use Windows no matter what.
Why should they care about "improving the reception by end users"? Why would they want to allow people to disable telemetry? It only benefits MS to keep it on, and it doesn't hurt MS if they make it hard or impossible to disable it. What are the users going to do, complain? Whine? They're certainly not going to abandon Windows; they've proven that over and over again.
Personally I think MS is being far too soft with users, especially corporate users and the government too. MS needs to force all of them to have telemetry turned on with all their keystrokes sent to MS, and advertisements shown to them as they work. No systems should be allowed to operate unless they're connected to the internet, and that goes for ones handling highly classified information too. This policy can only benefit MS, and users *will* accept it.
My wife went the Apple route when she went to look for a new laptop back in 2013 fora lot of the same reasons as listed in TFS. I was told to keep my mouth shut, and that she would do all the decision-making when it came to replacing her dead laptop. So, I follow her to Best Buy (I know, right?)... While I stand far enough back to not be part of the convo (but close enough to hear), the sales-schlub tells her that she was not allowed to buy a laptop with Windows 7 on it, but had to buy one with 8. Worst part was, he said it in such an arrogant well you're a girl, so trust the big bad techie guy here way that she just got pissed off. I followed her from a distance as she stormed out of the store, and let out a loudly-coughed "Bullshit!" just as I passed the confused salescritter.
Long story short, two hours later we drove around to other stores, then we drove home with a shiny new iPad. The Apple Store employee was nothing but kindness and accommodation as he listened to her needs, and (again as I kept distance), they had a very pleasant conversation as she chose what she wanted. She's been using the thing ever since.
I can only imagine what kind of special tech-support hell I'd be subjected to if she did bring home a Windows 8 laptop, got used to it, then had to go through the Win10 horseshit... instead, I got 3 years of pure bliss, and I think I had to help her once with something when the iCloud thing came out.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Dump Trump!
Dump Windows!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
... It's expensive to provide security and bug fix updates for an OS, let alone three of them....
Then why does Microsoft release so many of 'em if it is so expensive?
.
Why should I have to suffer for Microsoft's bad planning?
I actually wanted to do that... until I noticed that my board and CPU do not provide vt-d support... which makes gaming in the vm a tad useless.
I must congratulate Microsoft here... I've been trying to switch to Linux and going back once ever two years or so for the last, oh, almost twenty years.
Now the only thing stopping me is, in fact, my hardware. However, you can bet your hiney that when the next upgrade comes around, windows will be locked down tighter than Guantanamo.
Skylake software support seems to be a bit funky at times.
I suspect it will improve.
I just picked up a small skylake box and had to tell
GRUB to boot the kernel with "nosmp" to install Ubuntu.
There is some support forum mumble foo about RAM and if you device is unstable
try to update the BIOS and to try a different stick of RAM or RAM vendor.
This darn thing is FAST even with one lung as it were.
Old school interpreted stuff like FORTH can run out of cache,
if you are not greedy and suffer personal affection for bloated
gunk you too can fly.
Anyone that reads this in a month should expect improvements
sufficient to make this a nevermind. However if software and QA
engineers with internals are busy working for a TLA it could take longer.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I have no desire to switch from 7 to 10 and I have at least 6 or 7 licences for Windows 7. Running this OS will be fine whilst I am able to get updates from MS if I'm ever forced to do a clean installation, but ever since MS stopped issuing "Service Packs" life got harder. With their underhand determination to force us away from 7 and on to 10, I can't see a sudden moment of charity resulting in an "End of the Road" Service Pack update any time soon... So - does anyone know if it might be possible to engineer/build or develop our own "Service Pack" for Windows 7? What happens if a disk crash forces a rebuild to a 7 system after their cutoff date? Would that leave us screwed? I've got the ISO for Service Pack 1, but what about everything that has shipped since then? Anyone got any ideas please?
You're forgetting one tiny little thing:
Us geeks influence friends and family.
I got my whole family switched over to Macs ~ 10 years back. It was an dead easy "sell" as my Dad was so fed up with Microsoft's constantly nickeling and diming. IF Microsoft would be reasonable and sell Windows (licenses) for $20 instead of $200 Windows 10 Pro USB flash drive then MAYBE people would stick with them but that ship has sailed LONG AGO in our family. Macs are just easier to use & support for non-technical people.
I am sticking with Windows 7 Pro only because of a few Direct3D 11 games and I need a version of Windows for game dev that supports my 32 GB RAM. But future Microsoft upgrades? Fuck 'em. I already have used two MacBook Pro's from work that I've been using for the past 4 years and absolute love them; I just bought my own MacBook Pro once I found out I can I can use my GTX 980Ti as en eGPU.
I tell my friends, "Sorry, I no longer support Windows past ver 7. I recommend a Mac or Linux box unless you have a specific reason you _need_ Windows. Microsoft has no respect for your privacy nor for empowering the UI. Why would you continue to give them money to allow them to constantly abuse you??"
I work for a Fortune 50 company -- you would be surprised at how many Mac's we have here. WAY, WAY, more then I would ever expect. The IT guys love Mac OSX significantly more then Windows. Hell, we're STILL upgrading Windows XP systems to Windows 7 systems.
The harder MS pushes Windows 10 the more people they are going to piss off. Push too hard and they could find themselves irrelevant much like IBM is today. Don't think this is a possibility? Consider the facts:
Android is already used by over 1.4 Billion people.
* http://www.theverge.com/2015/9...
Linux powers 98.8% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world; this is something Microsoft can only *dream* about.
* http://www.top500.org/statisti...
Free is eventually going to win over corporate greed. It doesn't really matter how long it takes; Microsoft's days are numbered. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but 20 years down the road MS will be struggling to maintain any sense of relevancy.
So yeah, MS _does_ undermine themselves. They are just to big to recognized it and they don't care. That's fine. I'll just take my business elsewhere. Apparently a lot of us geeks do as well.
--
Microsoft Windows 8 and 10, noun: A 64-bit compilation of 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition with 0 bit of understanding good UI.
Three of them? Microsoft is still updating Windows XP. Just not consumer versions. Embedded and POSReady versions of xp have updates till 2019. When companies pay exorbitant amounts for extended xp support, Microsoft is just giving them updates they already wrote for embedded versions.
Sorry, I don't buy it. There's just way too many loyal customers for MS to go the way of IBM any time soon.
As for Android, that's irrelevant; Android is a mobile OS only. Windows is for desktop computers. We're not going to be doing serious office work on Android tablets. Supercomputers are irrelevant too; no one edits Word documents on a supercomputer. That's like saying Chrysler is going to disappear because they don't make bulldozers and dump trucks or train locomotives.
Maybe your company is sticking with Win7 for now, but they're eventually going to upgrade. The US government is already upgrading to Windows 10.
Perhaps everyone's fault for agreeing so readily to Microsoft's one sided contracts?
But enterprise is a core market of theirs. Most people at home can get away with nothing but a browser, so a Chromebook, iPad, or android tablet is cheaper and better for them. Maybe Microsoft is just surreptitiously trying to get out of the PC market altogether?
Sure, they want to do this but it also generates major customer anger. What if your automobile maker decided to stop support on your car after only a few months, no new service bulletins, no recalls for major defects, and everytime you took it in for service you'd have to listen to a lecture about why you're a Luddite? Big lashback from the customers I would think. Yet Microsoft gets away with this sort of bad behavior and some customers even praise them for it. They lie about what they're doing and some customers go online to defend them.
I suspect since every future version will be called Windows 10 that they will start claiming end of life service for various CPUs over time as well. Skylake will be dropped because it will be too old some day, so not only are you required to get mandatory OS updates you also will almost certainly have mandatory computer replacements.
After the Windows 8 debacle when the Windows VP was fired, they claimed they had made a mistake and that they really do love the desktop users. But I strongly suspect that they've back slid on this and are anxious to drop the desktop altogether.
Anyone in the IT industry worth half their salary has been warning of this day for decades. You put all your eggs in one basket, and charge that basket to someone else's care, eventually they're going to drop it on you. What's worse is that the design of these new mobile platforms and the trend towards cloud computing has put us in a position that potentially has far worse consequences than business trusting their computing needs to the traditional Microsoft model.
Well this ever be fixed? Probably not. The world has shown a greater desire to listen to MBAs and business types rather than to engineers and technicians, even when it comes to technology. Business people are taught to be reactive instead of proactive to problems and the nature of these problems is that when they arise it's already too late.
Anyways, I'll be in my cabin in the mountains. Let me know how it all works out.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Or put a Linux distro on your device (maybe even move that Windows stuff to a VM and disable network if the apps don't need it).
I already have the latest Skylake chip-set for my desktop and Fedora 23 runs on it without any issue. I have even got Mint running in a virtual machine and again no issues. When you look at the BIOS boot it lists Windows 7 onwards however I just selected "Other OS" and I had no issues installing Fedora 23 which took less than 30 minutes.
Since I am not into over-clocking I chose the basic 4 Core i7-6700 which has a maximum power rating of about 65W and a GA-Z170M-D3H motherboard with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. This is by no means top of the line however even though the clock frequency is rated at 3.4GHz to 4GHz Turbo. See the following info . When my desktop is idle or I am only doing some simple web surfing the clock frequency is about 800MHz and can ramp up to 4GHz depending on what you are doing and this is the default after the sixth motherboard update.
What is interesting is that my desktop (including everything) when idle to simple web surfing consumes less than 40W when I just use the inbuilt graphics of the motherboard and the most power consumption I have seen is 140W when doing some video translation. Of course once you start using one or more graphics cards then power usage will increase enormously.
Personally I don't care what Microsoft tries to dictate I am very comfortable with Linux and like you have said if I really need a Microsoft OS I can run it in a virtual machine although when that happens be prepared for Hell freezing over. :-)
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I really don't have any troubles with Windows 10. I don't agree that MS should force people to upgrade. If someone wants to be on an outdated system that they are happy with for whatever reason then let them be. I think all they need to do is just turn off automatic updates and then they can patch their systems manually from the MS web site. What I would like to see is MS come out with Windows 10 for the RT Platform. They put out RT and they are letting it die on the vine in favor of the Surface Pro platform. I have an Surface RT 128 tablet that I got cheap a couple years ago and it works great. Would actually like to see MS support it a little more than they do. They upgrade all their Nokia phones to windows 10 even the crappy 8GB models. They even have it on their phablet models.
Paul E. Bahre