Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Start Selling Windows 7 Add-On Support April 1st (computerworld.com)
AmiMoJo quotes Computerworld: Microsoft plans to start selling its Windows 7 add-on support beginning April 1. Labeled "Extended Security Updates" (ESU), the post-retirement support will give enterprise customers more time to purge their environments of Windows 7. From Windows 7's Jan. 14, 2020 end of support, ESU will provide security fixes for uncovered or reported vulnerabilities in the OS.
Patches will be issued only for bugs rated "Critical" or "Important" by Microsoft, the top two rankings in a four-step scoring system. ESU will be dealt out in one-year increments for up to three years and support will be sold on a per-device basis, rather than the per-user approach Microsoft has pushed for Windows 10 licensing. Costs for ESU will start out low — $25 or $50 per year per device — but will double each year, ending at $100 or $200 per device for the third and final year
Patches will be issued only for bugs rated "Critical" or "Important" by Microsoft, the top two rankings in a four-step scoring system. ESU will be dealt out in one-year increments for up to three years and support will be sold on a per-device basis, rather than the per-user approach Microsoft has pushed for Windows 10 licensing. Costs for ESU will start out low — $25 or $50 per year per device — but will double each year, ending at $100 or $200 per device for the third and final year
Uhhh...show me a version of Linux you don't have to pay support for that gets 10 years of patches WITHOUT upgrading, because if that is what qualifies for "bad service" I just wish I could get even half that for most of my devices.
Say what you will about their releases (Good Lord you couldn't pay me to run Windows 10, 8.1 with classic shell is a million times more stable) but I can't think of a single other company that gives 10 years (and in some cases more, geez they supported XP for what felt like an eternity) of security patches even on the lowest end consumer devices. Hell these days you can't even get 3 years of patches on a $1000+ Google phone when Google made the bloody thing, for a company like MSFT to support patches for 10 years on an OS that is 3 versions behind? Quite impressive IMHO.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
How does "stuff become dependent on Windows 7"?
The Windows API has not changed significantly in several decades. I have software written decades ago that still works just perfectly on the latest version of Windows 10.
If you have software that is dependent on a specific version of Windows, then you do not have software that uses the Windows API, and it is your own fault for deliberately riding the lock-in bus ... (dot SNOT, and a myriad of other fly-by-night technologies introduced by Microsoft for the purpose of keeping you buying new versions of their shit).
I paid for my Android phones up front, didn't get me more than a couple months worth of security patches.
And does modern software actually work on this LTS you speak of? Because I've found the big gotcha in Linux is a lack of a stable ABI (which is quite sad as MSFT has had one for what 2 decades now?) so that software requires kernel version x, GCC y which means you can't actually run up to date software that isn't backported by the distro. Again say what you will or make any excuses about how Linux doesn't need an ABI but I can install Win 7 right now and run the latest versions of pretty much all popular software out there OOTB.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.