The end of Windows 7

[Jimk]

Why not ask nicely on here?

[Tim Lamb]

OK so we listened to the news, read the discussion on 10 upgrade but how to explain this mornings 250mB update?

More seriously, is W7 32 bit going to sensibly change to W10?

[Pancho]

It is still yesterday in Microsoft land.

[Andy Burns]

The only update I see for win7 this year is a dotnet update.

Whether yesterday's crypto vulnerability is seen as serious enough that they do fix it in win7, or whether they'll use it as a big lever to tell joe public to move to win10 will be interesting ...

I've updated a couple of dozen machines 7->10 in the last year, most of them got a HD->SSD upgrade at the same time, so the original disk was there as a backup in case of issues, but was never needed. they were all allowed to upgrade for free, despite the official free offer being long gone.

[John Rumm]

"Patch Tuesday" has just happened as usual - but that will be the last set of patches[1] that apply to 7 for joe public. However they are not dismantling the patch infrastructure - so any patches already in existence will still be deployable.

[1] Unless there is something that seriously affects the security of other systems still supported - in which case they may roll out a fix for the unsupported systems, or, if you are a business user and have elected to pay MS for ongoing support (which means they still need to patch it for the next three years anyway)

Win 10 is not too much additional overhead compared to Win 7 - so there is a reasonable chance many machines with 7 will still work with 10. Much depends on what kind of spec machine it is. You will also need about 15GB spare drive space to do an in place upgrade. Having said that, a clean install of the 64bit version might make more sense.

[Jethro_uk]

Who cares. Install Linux (Mint being my distro of choice for a laptop, Debian for a server) and never worry about Microsoft again.

Even Internet Explorer is dead so companies (that want to survive) have no excuse for trying to force you to use Windows.

[T i m]

AFAIK, most expired MS OS's got some updates for some time after their expiry date, possibly when enough people complained that they couldn't upgrade their OS on that particular hardware (or didn't want to as they might lose access to some specific hardware or software).

'Change to', I wouldn't like to guarantee (but believe there is no specific reason it shouldn't). 'Be upgraded to via a fresh install using the W7 COA', pretty good, unless you have some important software or hardware etc.

The latter is more work because you also have to re-install all your software but does give you the chance to say have a clear out and / or upgrade to an SSD, whilst keeping your W7 install on the old hard drive, in case you can't use W10 for some reason (not sure what happens re licensing / authentication if either phone home and it shows as the same licence etc)?

FWIW, those machine here that are W7 and haven't been upgraded to W10 will probably stay that way as we generally run additional security software.

Happy as ever to pop over etc. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Don't be ridiculous! They are only offering free updates to blindies like me, however the death of windows 7 has been greatly oover emphasised, most users will carry on no doubt until third party software support stops as with xp. I have three xp machines with only third party anti virus support and there has been no casualties in all those years, so why would windows 7 suffer any more? It obviously depends on how you use your machine and how careful the users are, but a normal user who does not go to dodgy web sites or randomly click links on emails should be fine unless they are considered to be a high risk target storing lots of useful personal data, but as most of my machine is full of junk music and other rubbish good luck.

Brian

[Andy Burns]

browsers have stopped supporting winxp, I think chrome has said they'll only support win7 until 2021, it won't be long after that that old web browsers start to lose compatibility with more security conscious web servers ... for most users, why cling to the past?

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Yes my only issue with windows 10 is that they have a forced policy of making some software like Outlook Express not work and trashing it, If they had offered a paid for copy of Outlook with data and account transfer, I'd go with it as at every new version of windows 10 it trashes it again even though the damn thing works with just a few tweaks far better than the crappy windows email client does, which has no filters and no newsgroup support and keeps on crashing. Microsoft could very easily have modified Outlook express with extra security and satisfied Google and left things alone I'd have thought for a lot less cost than designing a rubbish replacement, and don't even get me started on what they have done to Skype. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

Edge is now based on Chrome, which I find hard to use. Brian

[Andy Burns]

Not yet, unless someone has gone out of their way to install the chromium version, mine here is still EdgeHTML 18.18363 from November.

[T i m]

The Loins share of desktop users it (still) seems. ;-(

Except for those Windows Only things that you end up running in WINE, Dual boot or a Windows VM and you are still running Windows?

They don't need to, you only need one program or piece of hardware that isn't supported, fully supported or even works as well as the Windows offering and 'most people' simply won't entertain Linux any further.

I say this with some experience of advocating, demonstrating and installing Linux(Ubuntu now Mint), often dual boot on machines for people (often the only way I can get it on there is to do so dual boot so they can still access Windows) and in most cases, they can't use so don't use, don't like and so don't want and the next time they give me their machines for some work, they ask me to remove Linux.

Only two of the many Linux installs I've done for people are using it as their primary OS (and one is Linux only) and that's because they are really only using them as web terminals (Facebook / emails etc).

As soon as they 'need' iTunes, MS Office, some specific hardware that wasn't ever 'Designed for Windows' (so you are now reliant on men in sheds bothering to try to write some support for it) then for 'most people' that's a struggle they see no reason to have. Very few people care about the concept of Open Source.

Now, if you are a geek, a coder, have an interest in OS's or have some anti MS 'thing', then I guess you might try harder or even be willing to go without stuff. Most people (in my long term / practical experience) would RATHER PAY for the latest version of Windows than have Linux for free, even after they have it installed on their PC's and running smoothly for nothing.

And all the above is ignoring the real world problem of where they can

1) buy a Linux PC from (*we* know there are such places, they don't) and 2) how easy it would be to get their Linux system fixed, as / when it goes wrong (and it can).

The shame is that the Linux fraternity couldn't get together and unify even one distro / spin that the software developers could hang their hats on then it might be doing better than ~5% of the desktop market after all these years.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Because they know it and AFATAC, 'it works', even if only 'mostly'.

That's why I'm still using XP on this daily desktop, even though I am more than capable of building and installing anything I want.

In fact I already have built and installed the silent low energy W10 box to replace this XP / Mac Mini, it's just finding the time to deal with all the work around getting the new PC in place and everything I use regularly weaned over.

Mechanics car or builders house etc ...

Cheers, T i m

[Bob Eager]

The irony is that, apparently, the vulnerability isn't there in Windows 7.

[Andy Burns]

I thought it would turn out that win7 and earlier *would* be affected, but apparently not ...

Windows 8.1 and prior, as well as the Server 2012 R2 and prior counterparts, do not support ECC keys with parameters. For this reason, such certificates that attempt to exploit this vulnerability are inherently untrusted by older Windows versions.

[Dr S Lartius]

However, users of elderly systems, perhaps updated from even older systems, may still be using some 16-bit executables; maybe not as major applications, but possibly as small but essential components.

AIUI, all Windows before Windows 10 can natively run 16-bit executables, but 64-bit Windows cannot.

I should shortly be updating a neighbour's Windows 7 system to Windows 10, and currently intend to get 32-bit, if I can see how.

[Tim Streater]

Win7 is just about useable if you turn off all the bling. Win10 is s**te by comparison. Fortunately I don't use either for any real work.

[Bob Eager]

You get the choice to download one, or both, of the installatiuon images.

You can do that before purchase of a key.

[Andy Burns]

Only 16 or 32 bit versions of Windows can run 16 bit programs, there have been 64 bit versions of XP, Vista, 7, 8.x and 10 (plus corresponding server editions) none of which can run 16 bit programs ...