Windows 7 Support Ends in One Year

Did you say 2020 will be the year of Linux?

 

RIP W7, I'll miss you so!

 

Win 7? Who cares about has beens..... Better solutions exist.

 

We're still about 99.9% W7 at the company. Why replace what works?

 

There's a lot of institutional inertia. With very good reason.

 

Its weird to sit here and say windows 10, Pro at least, is a better desktop than 7. You delete cortana and all the other bullshit shovelware that comes packaged with it and its a sexy desktop. Once I sat down and really customized my start menu I love it. Though I waited well into its life span before moving off 7 on all my home systems.

They announced at work windows 10 finally got approved for full deployment, kind of a huge deal, though ironically I already switched to a mac pro, not by choice but it does manage to keep IT out of my face. IT admins find High Sierra weird and scary.

 

Have you figured out a way to keep things "deleted" because they always like to reinstall and just keeping 7 pcs in the state I want has become more work than windows update seems to be worth to me...

I only run 1 windows 7 machine at this point, but it likely will stay that way till the machine dies on me.

 

My Win 7 Pro ain't going anywhere any time soon. MS can take their WAAS (Windows as a Service) and shove it. And if they do end up making Win 11, I'll at least check it out. But Win 10 is a definite no-go for me.

 

Haha, sexy.

To make it usable, I do the following:
1) Install a replacement Start Menu that's hierarchical (like Open Shell). I always like to curate my Start Menu
2) Enable the Quick Launch toolbar
3) Prohibit Cortana from running
4) Setup a PI-HOLE to prevent tracking
5) Use Winaero to enable/disable other features (like enabling borders on windows, disabling animations, etc)

I still dislike the 'flat' UI mode and the forced updates. Would be happier with the level of control I had with Win 7.

 

It will be fun to watch the % OS figures after support stops.
I predict it wont change much in the first few years and the shift wont be quick after that either unless a major security issue raises its head.
And you would have to wonder whether that was 'forced' upon us, I trust MS that little.

I intend staying on Windows 7 for as long as possible.
Once I change, it wont be to Windows 10.
I may end up using 10 for games but nothing more.

 

I set up my Windows 7 system maybe 7 years ago exactly how I like and still use it today, it has barely changed.
It has been reliable, dependable and looks great.

Windows 10 regularly shafts itself and your configuration, and sometimes takes time before you realise it has screwed you over.
The number of times just this last year I have given a sigh of relief I am still on Windows 7 is amazing, after all the screw ups and deliberate ways of shafting their user base MS has foisted on Windows 10.
I wont use an OS that I cant trust and doesnt stay how I put it.
Windows 10 makes me uneasy, its a nasty piece of work.
Fighting my OS isnt a way I can enjoy computing.

 

I won't use win 10, the terms aren't agreeable for me.

Next year I'll finally upgrade my aging 3770 to AMD and use Linux to VM my work apps on win7. That gets me by for several more years when I'll no longer specifically need windows.

 

After I had Windows 10 for about 2 months I decided it was time to start dual booting with Linux. Almost all the applications I run on Windows 10 are natively available on Linux so I boot into Linux for all my normal computing needs and only boot to Windows 10 when I'm gaming or doing the occasional Photoshop session. The amount of maintenance required for my Linux distro has been much less than the Windows 10 maintenance.

 

Goodbye Windows XP 2.0

 

Nwm, the hard original copies of XP and 7 are on hand and ready. When all this bs cloud computing comes crashing down, they wont mind at all.

 

Linux has us covered.

https://distrowatch.com/

 

I must be one of the few people that didn't find XP that bad. I remember being a beta tester for XP in the day, back when they actually sent you a physical disc in a nice cover with a free sticker.

At least XP gave me full control over updates and didn't try to turn my PC into a phone.

 

XP was great. Then it became EOL and was no longer great. Software has to be kept patched and also current w/features... Windows 7 is great, but it will quickly become a high risk piece of software to keep using online...

 

That happens with every OS, Windows 7 will be no different.

 

Security patches.

This.

 

Hoping like hell I can get ryzen2 working on 7...

 

It's sad to see W7 getting an operational status which spells EOL.

Just get Windows 10 LTSB/LTSC, Classic Shell and KMS with your own choice of softwares then you're good to go.

 

Since there is no Windows 10 Media Center, I'll be keeping my Windows 7 Media center.
Hopefully they will keep the guide updates going for a while longer due to the Windows 8.0/8.1 version still being supported.

 

Ok. Can you steer me in the right direction to do that?

 

FTFY.

7's just getting started.

 

I'm still running Windows Bob over here, I don't know what y'all are complaining about.

 

With Windows XP, even though public support ended a while ago, a person can still get the ongoing security updates for it by doing a simple registry tweak. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same thing to continue getting Windows 7 security updates until 2023.

Personally, I've had Windows Update disabled since mid-2015 and haven't had any issues. There are simple-enough ways to protect a PC without requiring updates from Microsoft, and the threat of being exposed due to not updating a PC has become a propaganda tool of Microsoft's used to coerce people into installing Microsoft's latest garbageware, including their ever-growing number of illegal spying and data-harvesting vulnerabilities.

 

There are security patches for 7, so why would we replaced it now? At this point it's just scare tactics. You must upgrade to 10 because they'll end support in a year! They're trying to use it as Damocles's sword.
No, I'll consider my options when they really end support. And I doubt they'll just cut off support if W7 still sits at 33% then. Do you think they'll just leave one third of all desktop users out to dry?
No, they cannot do that, that's exactly why they employ scare tactics because they hope to reduce that share by then to a level where cutting 7 off is not seen as heinous an act. So, no thank you where 7 serves it's function and serves it well, I'll hold out till the last possible minute.

 

What makes you think they can't do it? It's their operating system and the fact they've announced it means they're committed to it. Personally I think that holding onto Windows 7 in the hope MS might not stand true to their word is a bit of wishful thinking, especially when things are a little different this time as they gave Windows 10 away.

In 12 months time security patches will stop being released for Windows 7, another 12 months after that software support will start declining.

Which is sort of pointless when XP isn't compatible with all the latest software, most of it simply refuses to run the second it detects XP as an OS.

 

They announced it for XP and then extended it twice if memory serves.

Again, I'm worried about now, not about what might or might not happen 24 months from now. Microsoft wants us to upgrade to 10 now, they can come up with a better reason than "OR ELSE!" Because every other reason is against it, not for it.

 

I could somewhat understand for personal use but if this is the plan at your place of work, it is risk taking and I would hope that you aren't the one making that decision as it is simply not smart business to do that.

My company has about 180k Desktop Windows installs and we hope to be >90% to Windows 10 by the end of the year. Right now, we are about 80%. We have a good number of off network (aka no internet access) systems as well.

 

agreed, not happening

worst comes to worst I will just delete all browsers except steam on the last gaming box

 

Have you ever tried Google?

It's really not THAT hard to find it.

 

We prefer productivity. In fact I was planning on downgrading some 10 computers to 7, because they don't perform as expected. And I suspect that is caused by 10. As that is the only difference in configuration between the old machines and the new ones doing the same task. I'm really curious how that will turn out.

We're not a large company and the IT is handled by contractors for better or worse. But it takes one word from me, and I reckon we can be on 10 within two weeks. So if MS does pull the plug on 7 updates we can switch before the next patch tuesday.

 

Personally, I'd be hoping for the best but preparing for reality. Once software support ends, they can roll out all the security patches they like, that OS is as good as dead.

If you absolutely have to run Windows, it's Windows 10 for you I'm afraid.

 

Maintenance? Such as what? The only "maintenance" that I do is upgraded AMD drivers, when I want too.

 

I've have 10 PC with Win 10 on them. Here's some of the problems I've had:

1) Having to do a fresh install of a feature update that wouldn't work with their standard update scheme.
2) Having multiple system getting stuck in a boot loop. Required a fresh install to fix.
3) Miscellaneous programs broken after the twice a year updates. Had to reinstall the programs.

And the annoyance of have to re-disable Cortana after the twice a year updates.

 

If Microsoft hadn't handcuffed 10 to mandatory automatic updating, I would have switched years ago. I'm never using a computer for any real work where I'm not in control of when it updates and have a fallback plan if something goes wrong and isn't remedied.