Mainstream Support For Windows 7 Ends-Extended Support Continues

Time flies doesn’t it? Only recently support for Windows XP ended. So I was amazed to hear that Microsoft will no longer offer mainstream support for Windows 7 from 13/01/15. The final mainstream support ending means the relatively new operating system will no longer receive any new features. Microsoft will continue to offer the needed security updates and hot fix support, of course.

Beginning Tuesday of this week, Microsoft has ended mainstream support for the 5 year old operating system. From now on the technology giant will only offer people extended support for Windows 7. The extended support stage of the process will end on January 14th 2020. After this time no security patches will be offered to users anymore.

Windows 7 is  half way through its lifecycle and according to research companies StatCounter and Net Applications, the OS is used by more than 50% of all internet users. Net Applications propose the market share of Windows 7 had increased last year, due in part, to the finalisation of support for Windows XP.

The end of support for Window XP resulted in numerous companies and consumers making the switch to a newer Windows version. As Windows 8 had massive teething troubles, many companies decided to ignore it and move to Windows 7 instead. In spite of the migration of XP users, StatCounter announced a decrease in Windows 7 users, mostly benefiting Windows 8.1.

Gartner informed companies in August of 2014 to prepare for the end of support of Windows 7.  Stephen Kleynhans from Gartner said, “The end of Windows 7 support seems far away, but the time between when the next version of Windows 10 may ship, and support for Windows 7 will end, is about the same timeframe as from when Windows XP support ended.”

There are other products that will be affected this week also. As well as the end of mainstream support for Windows 7, Microsoft is also ending support for Virtual Server 2005, Systems Management Server 2003, Host Integration Server 2004, Visual FoxPro 9.0 and Windows CE 5.0.

I guess I can hang around until Jan 14 2020 to upgrade. After all it’s only 5 years away.

[Image via YouTube]

SOURCE: http://www.myce.com/news/windows-7-mainstream-support-ends-tomorrow-74248/