Windows 7 Not Dead: Microsoft Offering 2 Years Extra Support If You Choose To Pay

Windows 7 Not Dead: Microsoft Offering 2 Years Extra Support If You Choose To Pay
Adarsh Verma, September 7, 2018
https://fossbytes.com/microsoft-offering-extended-windows-7-support-pay/

"In the past, Microsoft announced its plans to end Windows 7 support on January 14, 2020. It seems that not enough users are migrating to the newer Windows 10 and it has prompted the company to offer two years extra support to customers who choose to pay for it.

It’s a known fact that tons of Enterprise customers are still running Windows 7 installations on their computers.

As a part of the Extended Security Updates (ESU) plan, Windows 7 will continue receiving security updates until January 2023.

It’s worth noting that ESU plan is only available to customers running Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise editions.

In case users extend the support, Microsoft will also ensure that they’ll be able to run Office 365 ProPlus on Windows 7 devices through January 2023.

Apart from the extended Windows 7 support, Microsoft has also offered a new Desktop App Assure feature. Available at no extra cost, this service ensures that most of the apps designed for Windows 7 will continue to work on Windows 10. If some user faces any problem, he/she can file a ticket via Microsoft FastTrack service.

Which operating system are your currently using? Tell us what you love the most about it in comments and keep reading Fossbytes."

 

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee
Made the jump to Win10? Have an extra 12/30 months of September support
By Richard Speed 6 Sep 2018 at 18:02
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/06/windows_7_extended_support/

"Windows 7 hold-outs were thrown a lifeline by Microsoft today – as were administrators exhausted by the pace of Windows 10 updates.

Want Windows 7 support until 2023? Sure thing, but it’ll cost you
Windows 7 remains the most popular variant of Microsoft’s operating systems on corporate desktops, and enterprises are not showing much inclination to make the leap into the double digit future of Windows 10, even with extended support for the veteran operating system ending on 14 January, 2020.

In an announcement issued today, Redmond's veep for Office and Windows marketing Jared Spataro took the unusual step of confirming that, yes, if your pockets are deep enough, Redmond will keep flinging out security updates for Win7 for another three years.

Spataro went on explain that the Extended Security Updates (ESU) would be available to all Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise customers in the software giant’s volume licencing program, sold on a per device basis with the cost increasing every year.

The plan is not unheard of (Windows XP continued to quietly receive fixes-for-a-fee for some time) if you paid enough, though it is highly unusual for Microsoft to be quite so public about its offering. The news will have smoothed the furrowed brows of enterprise admins looking nervously at their armies of Windows 7 installations.

The extension of Windows 7 support is also good news for Office 365 ProPlus subscribers, which will see the product supported on the elderly OS until the ESU period comes to an end in 2023.

Need more time to plan for Windows 10 feature updates? How does 30 months sound?
In the same announcement, Microsoft faced up to the fact that the hectic pace of Windows 10 updates was not to the liking of its enterprise and education customers. The slinger of Windows patches announced that the currently supported feature updates (1607, 1703, 1709 and 1803) will now receive 30 months of support from their original release dates.

The September feature updates of Windows 10 (including the increasingly oddly named ‘October 2018 Update’) will also get 30 months of attention from Microsoft. Feature updates targeted for March will continue to only see 18 months of support. IT professionals therefore have a clear indicator of which of Microsoft’s two-updates-a-year they should be deploying.

Sadly, since Microsoft has shown no inclination to step back from its determination to fling out two Windows 10 updates per year, the response “none of them” is not an option. "

Comments

 

Helping customers shift to a modern desktop
By Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Office and Windows Marketing, on September 6, 2018
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mic.../helping-customers-shift-to-a-modern-desktop/

"...
Windows 7 Extended Security Updates
As previously announced, Windows 7 extended support is ending January 14, 2020. While many of you are already well on your way in deploying Windows 10, we understand that everyone is at a different point in the upgrade process.

With that in mind, today we are announcing that we will offer paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis and the price will increase each year. Windows 7 ESUs will be available to all Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise customers in Volume Licensing, with a discount to customers with Windows software assurance, Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education subscriptions. In addition, Office 365ProPlus will be supported on devices with active Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. This means that customers who purchase the Windows 7 ESU will be able to continue to run Office 365 ProPlus.

Please reach out to your partner or Microsoft account team for further details.
..."

 

Good cop/bad cop. Is MS really doing anyone a favor by giving extra time for WIndows 7? They will increase the cost each year until 2023 until users finally make the move to Windows10. Sounds like the beginning of the Windows OS subscription service.

 

MS did this for Windows XP => Windows XP ended on April 8, 2014, Windows Vista had a long tail ending April 11, 2017, and now Windows 7 is getting an extension - it's kind of a tradition since many users don't need to upgrade to a newer OS to do their work / fun and would prefer to keep it going as long as possible.

And, many still run end of support OS's and will until the computer finally gets recycled years from now.

You can still get Windows 10 "for free" using old Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 keys or without activation, or with a $10-15 key available from legit providers - whether the keys are in the correct region is another question...

I would imagine Microsoft would like to get more money how ever they can dream up a model, like monthly, but the likely scenario is Microsoft bundling the OS with MS Office as part of the monthly cost.

IDK if I see a standalone OS monthly program going over well. It would probably take some kind of functional feature bundle, like Office, or Xbox / MS Gaming.

It's nice to hear MS will continue providing security patches for another 30 months for Windows 7, considering Windows 7 market share is still 42.45%.

 

True ********.
Microshite should think twice about doing this.
It's the second beloved OS on the face of the planet besides XP and you dare doing that.
True for businesses but for us users,nah.
When the Linux boat is fully repaired(games and apps etc and laptop's optimiztion etc) I will jump.For now,this crap will live.

 

Maybe I would if I could actually use windows 7 on my kaby lake machine....

 

You actually can.
It's just the drivers and bypassing the artificial blockage created by Wintel(M$+Intel).

 

No, it doesn't. Kaby Lake Intel HD 630 will not initialized graphics even with the gigabyte beta driver that was unofficially released

 

I have read somewhere that you can mod the driver for use on 7.
Anyway,Windows 10 has fallen way too far for redemption.

 

If you got some novel method, I'd love to hear it because I hate windows 10

 

Kaby Lake HD Graphics 630 video drivers for Windows 7 x64
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3299031/kaby-lake-graphics-630-video-drivers-windows-x64.html

There are more solutions - versions with caveat's - with owners reporting Windows 7 and 8.1 successes.

 

I figured they pretty much had to do this because the majority of ATMs were/are still running XP.

 

PATHETIC.

They extended it for XP, this is only to prevent them having another OS that will end up like XP, and to scare businesses into upgrading to W10.

 

Argh, land ahoy! One can still get a legit Windows 10 copy by upgrading pirated Legacy-MBR Windows 7. Works much better than KMS activation keys from eBay calling home all the time.

 

What a joke

Most businesses are still running on Windows 7 because its stable and they dont have to worry about an update breaking their systems. They're just strong arming businesses to upgrade to Windows 10 even though its still unstable.

 

Nah, it's more akin to milking those very same businesses.

Any organisation of some 100+ employees likely has a centralised roll-out management system involving dozens or even hundreds of different applications, some of them from the XP era. For them, switching 7->10 isn't a day's work, but rather months and months of effort and testing for the IT department and the apps' users, all next to their regular chores. The easy way out for such an organisation is to buy the 2-year extension plan and postpone the inevitable and any manager pressed for time will readily fork over pretty much any amount of cash rather than having to explain to their boss why their organisation is, supposedly, unprotected from the evil --- somethings ---.

 

Problem everyone forgets the longer you stay on outdate O/S the happier the malware will thanks you for it. If it is taking time to upgrade that is far different from someone wanting to hold onto outdated O/S that has bigger holes to drive through. We will have to move one sooner or later and those holding out for other reasons than the migration cost is just asking for trouble. All those people will be the future botnet DDOS servers.

 

Having the latest OS doesnt mean you're safe from malware. Any OS can get malware if you dont have a decent Anti-malware/AV software installed and/or if you're browsing through shady sites (Warez, porn and etc). At least Windows 7 and 8.1 users dont have to worry about some update breaking their systems and becoming unstable unlike Windows 10, This is why businesses refuses to make the jump to 10 because of that reason and its the same reason why they stick to XP rather than upgrading to Vista back in the XP days

Also an DDOS attack has nothing to do with of what OS you have, As long as any system is connected to the internet you're vulnerable to them, even servers that run on any Linux OS.

 

Unless you click on it yourself then no O/S is safe. Being smarter about your internet usage is also part of your commitment to using the O/S as well.

Windows 10 comes with Defender by default and turned on unless you turn it off because you think your fast/quicker then the malware. Which most case is "NOT".

Really then you must've missed alot of those story w7, w8 being broken by updates as well. Cherry picking here.

This delusional rant makes no business sense. Business goes to a new O/S for Security/Stability problem and if the old software they used don't upgrade well guess what they will take their Business to another company that will gladly fill their spot. Business 101.

Then you my friend are living in a shell. DDOS doesn't care about your O/S as long as it can break it then that is fine by it.

 

My point exactly.

Windows Defender comes with every Windows OS by default since Vista.

Not as often as Windows 10 because the OS has multiple build updates a month and dont forget the multiple redstone updates in a year. Also at least Windows 7/8.1 users can control of what updates they want to install and disable updates if they want to without installing a 3rd party software or editing the registry.

Sorry but you're the one who being delusional. You forget that many businesses use older computers and stick with XP/7 because its stable for them. They wont change to 8.1 nor 10 because it'll take months of testing and effort to make sure their system works on it, not to mention it'll cost them extra money for a yearly subscription based licenses plus buying new PCs if their older systems are having issues running the OS, its not as simple as you think. Also dont forget the start menu change back in Windows 8 which most people still dont like which is part the reason they refused to make the jump to Windows 8/8.1.

And thats my point exactly but you're the one who said that "all those people will be the future botnet DDOS servers." I only brought up Linux only because its the most secured OS for servers and they receive DDOS attacks.

 

Enterprise versions don't have the forced auto-updates that Home, etc do, fyi.

 

Good point. I forgot about all about the Enterprise version

 

The NHS in the UK paid Microsoft millions for updates for XP, If it works why change it.

John.

 

and where do the linux server receive the DDOS attacks from?

 

I already answered that in one of my earlier posts here

 

No, you did not. I asked where do the attacks come from. I did not ask if something is secure against them.

 

I see, well coming my experience of running a Linux VPS server in the past where i used to host games like Minecraft, I would receive them from time to time from players who end up getting banned from my game servers by one of my admins and some who made threats of DDOSing my servers if we didnt give him admin status. When running a server there always a risk of attacks but usually they're very rare.

 

No. That would be the person ordering the attack. Where do the attacks come from?

I'll give a hint: unpatched windows XP and 7 machines. Millions of them, especially in China. Botnets full of unpatched windows machines, different types of malware and viruses crawling into machines using vulnerabilities that would have been prevented with few mouse clicks. So many, that Microsoft started to use automatic updates to annoy the rest of the world.

 

I think you're talking about WannaCry right? I know that millions of people In China still uses Windows XP and was affected by it

 

That was ransomware. I'm talking about malware that turns computer into part of a botnet, used remotely to ddos servers for fun or for profit.

 

Hmm now im thinking you're talking about Mylobot because its a type of malware that does what you've described

 

Just like that, but it can be anything else made in the last 15 years if the target computer hasn't been properly patched. Even loveletter could still work if one gets hands on it...

 

It looks like Microsoft's move to offer Windows 7 support for a couple more years has encouraged BIOSTAR to start supporting Windows 7 in new hardware.

BIOSTAR Adds Windows 7 Support To Some Intel and AMD Motherboards
Comments
by Gavin Bonshor on April 9, 2019 3:00 PM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1419...-7-support-to-some-intel-and-amd-motherboards

 

I have an unused retail Windows 7 Ultimate Key, and an used Windows 8.1 Ultimate. How can I use either one to get free Windows 10?

 

You can't, as far as I know. The free upgrade period to Windows 10 ended some time ago.

 

Try install 7 \ 8.1 on some laptop\pc (somewhat recent > activation stored in bios), activate, then install fresh 10, not upgrade (Media Creation Tool with wipe of old os). Only way to know imo.

Is the 8.1 retail ? If not, the (eventually succesfull) 10 activation must be done on the one pc that the 8.1 'belongs' to, and will only work there.

8.1 pro to 10 pro activated fine here on several laptops not that long ago, and can swap hd\ssd (or use a macrium image) and switch between 8.1 and 10, activation is not lost for original os.

 

From what I've heard you have that option after getting the latest updates from Microsoft - if it's the same free Windows 10 upgrade from GWX all over again, you'll be prompted.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...sable-telemetry.780476/page-135#post-10890163

Google translate:
https://www.borncity.com/blog/2019/04/02/windows-7-ist-gwx-zurck/

I still don't recommend Windows 10 as an option, and I am going to try to live with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 until the last possible unsupported minute.

 

Same here. Or Ive called MS, said Id updated to win10 Pro, but only have my win7Pro retail key. They'll give me the iso link, and Ive simply chosen Win10 Pro when prompted to download the iso and install Pro version.