Slashdot Mirror


Microsoft To Stop Offering Support For Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Old Surface Devices in Forums (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has announced that starting next month it will no longer be participating in the technical support forums for Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT and numerous other products. On the software front, the company says that it will also no longer provide support for Microsoft Security Essentials, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010 and 2013 as of July. It is not just software that is affected. Microsoft is also stopping support for Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2, Microsoft Band and Zune. Some forums will be locked, preventing users from helping each other as well.

5 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. How Old?? by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Informative

    Surface RT - 2012
    Surface Pro - 2013
    Surface Pro 2 - 2013
    Surface 2 - 2013

    How does this compare to apple? I think macOS High Sierra runs on laptops from 2009 onwards?

    --
    The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
  2. Re:Oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just love how you almost always end up with some indian dude telling you how to reboot in 10 steps as a solution for everything.

  3. Re:That's a load of crap... by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative

    Windows 10 is a 100% phone/tablet interface. You can easily verify that yourself: they did away with the right mouse button.
    I noticed it the first time with my 3G WWAN: before, Windows 7, I could right-click on it and "connect": immediately online. Afterwards with Windows 7 I had to doubleclick and then connect through dialogs. Much more clunky, takes longer, very much phone like.

    The whole "settings" abomination works the same way. All the menus are made phone compatible.

    Correction: not a 100% phone interface. They are apparently incapable of actually fully replacing the old control panel what the "settings" crap is supposed to do.

    So yes, I have "tested" Windows 10 and running it. I'm not sure if you are however.

  4. Re:That's a load of crap... by FictionPimp · · Score: 2, Informative

    I honestly don't have a problem with windows 10. In fact the powershell support has become so great that I'd say windows 10 (with the exception of updates without the enterprise version) is the easiest version of windows for a professional to manage. I also find it odd that IT staff would not be constantly learning and growing their skillset. I'd hope to god they are not managing windows by using RDP or visiting each machine. This is the realm of group policy, powershell, etc. Learn it or get relegated back down to level 1 help desk.

  5. Re:That's a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    The technologies you mentioned are not a silver bullet. PSH works until you hit a bug with PowerShell remoting that makes it simply not work any more without any useful error. It is also incredibly slow in comparison to SSH and probably the reason that it will be replaced by it in the future as the preferred transport method (it works right now in the latest versions).

    Some cmdlets are unstoppable even in the new console window in Windows 10. You can press Ctrl+C all you want, but for some operations it won't do anything.

    Doing startup scripts with PSH is insanity, especially when the target computer doesn't have a fast SSD. The runtime is .NET-based so it has to load *a lot*. Simple .cmd or cscript.exe-based scripts are orders of magnitude faster than anything possible with PSH short of compiling your own C# programs.

    Group policy only works when it feels like it and debugging it is a pain. If you follow Microsoft's guidance and make it asynchronous it gets even better. The logs, if they even exist, rarely provide useful information as well. Not to mention the Group Policy Preferences which were just kludged in as an afterthought and are probably not even tested with Windows 10 any more.