Reminder: Microsoft to end support for Windows 7 in 1-year from today

So it’s time for you to upgrade your OS and say goodbye to
Windows 7, as its five years of extended support will end on
January 14, 2020—that’s precisely one year from today.

After that date, the tech giant will no longer release free
security updates, bug fixes and new functionalities for the
operating system that’s still widely used by people, which could
eventually leave a significant number of users more susceptible to
malware attacks.

However, the end of free support doesn’t end Windows 7 support
for big business and enterprise customers. As always, Microsoft
does make exceptions for certain companies that are willing to pay
a lot of money to continue their support.

According to a ‘Death of Windows 7’ report^[1]
from content delivery firm Kollective, as many as 43% of
enterprises are still running the nine-year-old operating system,
of which 17% didn’t know when Microsoft’s end of support deadline
hit.

Millions of Users Are Still Using Windows 7

Want to know how popular Windows 7 is among users? Even after
aggressively pushing Windows 10 installations since its release in
2015, its market share finally managed to overtake the
user-favorite Windows 7 just by the end of last year.

Windows 7 was released in 2009 and, according to December 2018
stats from Netmarketshare^[2], is currently running on
about 37 percent of the world’s PC fleet, which is far ahead of its
radically redesigned successor Windows 8 and 8.1 combined.

Microsoft stopped
the mainstream support^[3]
for Windows 7 in January 2015, but Windows users have continued to
receive security updates and patches for known security issues as
part of the company’s extended support, which runs for at least
five years.

In March 2017, Microsoft also started blocking
new security patches^[4]
and updates for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users running the latest
processors from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and others.

“For Windows 7 to run on any modern silicon, device drivers and
firmware need to emulate Windows 7’s expectations for interrupt
processing, bus support, and power states- which is challenging for
WiFi, graphics, security, and more,” the company said.

“The lifecycle begins when a product is released and ends when it’s
no longer supported. Knowing key dates in this lifecycle helps you
make informed decisions about when to update, upgrade or make other
changes to your software.”

Besides ending support for Windows 7 next year, Microsoft will
also end support for MS Office 2010, Windows Server 2008/2008 R2,
SQL Server 2008/2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and Windows Embedded 7 in
2020.

As for Windows 8, the operating system’s extended support is set
to end on January 10, 2023.

What Should Affected Windows 7 Users Do?

If you and/or your business are still running Windows 7, you still
have one year left to shift to the latest operating system.

Government agencies and big enterprises can still pay for
expensive extended support to continue receiving security updates
and patches from the company if they need more than a year to
migrate to the newer version.

However, regular users should upgrade their operating system
immediately to Windows 10 or a Linux distribution, rather than
running an unpatched and increasingly vulnerable version of Windows
operating system.