Microsoft Stops Selling Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 To Computer Makers (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report on VentureBeat: Out with the old, and in with the new. Microsoft yesterday stopped providing Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 licenses to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including its PC partners and systems builders. This means that, as of today, the only way you can buy a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 is if you can still find one in stock. Two years ago, Microsoft stopped selling Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows 7 Ultimate licenses to OEMs. Now Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 are also out of the picture, leaving Windows 10 as the only remaining option, assuming you want a PC with a Microsoft operating system. This is Microsoft's way of slowly phasing out old operating systems.

Comments

Pushback

[DogDude]

I think they're going to get tremendous pushback from customers, and they'll continue selling Windows 7 for a while longer, still. I can't imagine a lot of businesses using Windows 10. That interface is pretty silly.

Re:Pushback

[Darinbob]

Nobody likes the ribbons. Microsoft is oblivious to customer concerns because their goals are to add features and maybe fix them later. Customer desires to not fit into their business plans, they treat Windows users like an annoyance (the real customers are the OEMs). No customers ever asked for a touch screen interface, no customers ever asked that the desktop be deprecated in Windows 8, no customers ever asked for a broken implementation of a phone applet store, no customers ever asked for Microsoft to reboot their computers to apply updates when they were in the middle of a game or skype call.

Windows 8.1 was mostly an apology, Windows VP was fired, we were allowed to boot to desktop again, etc. Then Windows 10 reversed course and doubled down; the store centric model was still front and center, the start menu was just the metro start page but not full screen, the update policy was just insane, etc.

The whole attitude from Microsoft is a dramatic shift from how they behaved during XP/7 time frames. Maybe it's the new CEO, maybe they're feeling more and more irrelevant and are panicking because desktops are not the big thing they once were, but something has changed in Redmond behavior.

Saw it coming; surprised with outcome

[poofmeisterp]

A company I work for has been using Linux in the server environment for, well, before I worked here (+15 years?)... It's always been a shouting match game in conversations about switching desktops from one to the other. We've held on to Windows for compatibility and, more importantly here, familiarity reasons. None of the company employees (sans IT) know what a Linux distro OS looks like, let alone how to use it. I was actually shocked when we had a short meeting about this today - we're forced to in the next two years "upgrade" to Windows 10, or start the process of documenting usage procedures, converting in-house software to Linux-compatible (no WINE), making procedures of all employees' unique or shared daily work make sense in an environment they are not familiar with, accounting for third-party software that is Windows-only, and ironing out the bugs of printing (we have some pretty custom stuff, albeit simple). The meeting lasted less than half an hour and the decision was made to migrate. The third party software and unique printing, uh, debacles will be worked out by virtualizing the Windows OS completely, using snapshots at different points during the day and having the central FS shares be the same as they were. Company policy is to NOT use Windows for any purpose involving Internet activity; the software we use that is Windows-only is internal to us; only uses the 'net to upgrade between versions. We already had LibreOffice in place and people are familiar with it and using it every day. There will be a dedicated, non-internet gateway machine in each department for things that involve HAVING to use MS Office for some reason. Sharing sales presentations will be a snap - from a virtualized instance of Windows 7 until it's necessary for "on-board" or other reasons to use Windows 10 (showing another company that we use the same, etc etc etc). I can't believe the meeting was as short as it was. We've been preparing but just NOT doing it. That has been irritating me for a while now. Better to slowly transition than quickly. But wait, it will be a slow transition because we have a couple of years left! I don't "do that" when it comes to bashing MS just to do it, but this gives me a chance to NOT bash, but thank them in an offhanded way for nicely making the decision for us. You want to force us to be in your control without options, well, now you lose control. Before it was tolerated.

Re:Microsoft: You can have any color car...

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking it won't be the color per se, but an enforced OS 'rental' that we should be on the lookout for...

How have people like you not moved to Linux, BSD or OSX yet? If you're that paranoid about Microsoft doing what you say (and frankly we've been hearing the same thing for the past decade anyway) then the fact that you are still using Windows indicates you will probably just do whatever they say anyway.

The thing is though, if they were to have Windows on a subscription basis people would probably pay and it's because MS would offer some additional value that people would be fine paying for. Like what they did with Office365, it's now on all your devices and you get online storage and syncing so people are fine with paying for that. Sure they could get free software but it's not all about money, people will pay for convenience and for things to just seamlessly work together. I can run Windows on my Macbook and it just works, but which Linux distro just works with hi-dpi screens, ACPI power management, broadcom wifi and the touchpad? Certainly not Ubuntu, Mint or Arch, they all have various issues that need immediate workaround and setup just to make them work properly and what you need to do varies wildly depending on the distro and the hardware you want to run it on. And then do you use that abortion that is Unity? Or Gnome3? Or KDE? They are so damn inconsistent, it's all over the place. Now if you see "free software" as the cheap alternative then you probably would have got Linux figured out on your machine but most people won't, they'd rather pay for something that works instead.