I finally seem to be recovering from a nasty flu that is now wreaking havoc all across my tiny Arctic town – better now than when we hit -40 I guess – so let’s talk about something that’s not going to recover because it actually just fucking died: Windows 7.
For nearly everyone, support for Windows 7 ended on January 14th, 2020. However, if you were a business who needed more time to migrate off of it because your CEO didn’t listen to the begging and pleading IT department until a week before the deadline, Microsoft did have an option for you. Businesses could pay to get up to 3 years of extra security updates. This pushes the EOL date for Windows 7 to January 10th, 2023.
Okay but that’s still nearly 2 years earlier than October 8th, 2024?
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I’d like to solve the puzzle! It’s POSReady, isn’t it? Of course it is! Windows Embedded POSReady’s support finally ended a few days ago, and this means that for all intents and purposes, Windows 7 is well and truly dead. In case you happen to be a paleontologist, think of Windows Embedded POSReady adding an extra two years of support to Windows 7 as the mammoths who managed to survive on Wrangel until as late as only 4000 years ago.
Windows 7 was one of the good ones, for sure, and all else being equal, I’d choose it over any of the releases that cam after. It feels like Windows 7 was the last release designed primarily for users of the Windows platform, whereas later releases were designed more to nickle and dime people with services, ads, and upsells that greatly cheapened the operating system. I doubt we’ll ever see such a return to form again, so Windows 7 might as well be the last truly beloved Windows release.
If you’re still using Windows 7 – please don’t, unless you’re doing it for the retrocomputing thrill. I know Windows 8, 10, and 11 are scary, and as much as it pains me to say this, you’re better off with 10 or 11 at this point, if only for security concerns.
In my perception (not a definite opinion, but some experience), hardware and operating system are tied together, with some stretch. Therefore, unconditionally recommending to upgrade may stretch things too far. 🙂
Using Windows 7 will imply using a vintage computer (with perhaps an obsolete feature) and some vintage application software. There may be no alternative (with a smooth transition, that is).
Elaborating:
Me, I’m still regularly using a 2009 Vaio with an obsolete web editor that I’m still trying to replace with an equivalent on macOS. (One that only inserts HTML code when I want so, and besides shines at referencing anchors. Suggestions welcome.) That computer also has a now obsolete financial administration application installed. I should export my data in some file format that a current app can handle (preferably on macOS and iOS). – I remember trying to use these applications under Linux running Crossover, but failed.
Besides, I have a 2007 Vaio dedicated to music-making apps (sequencers, software synthesizers). This time capsule recently had me retrieve a license-key file. This system represents (nearly) all that I have for making music under Windows.
I have a 2009 HP tower that I remember upgrading (RAM, SSD) in 2014, but I can’t even remember its Windows version. Maybe 10. It may feature the last full Adobe suite before that became a subscription matter. (My latest desktop computers date from 2019 for Windows and 2024 for macOS.)
Examples of obsolete hardware features: SCSI, FireWire. I have storage devices using these.
Your point is valid. That said, Windows 10 is not much heavier than Windows 7 and more performant in some ways. There is perhaps more “optional” bloat these days but honestly anything that could run Windows 7 can run Windows 10. Even older drivers should work in most cases but SCSI and FireWire should work out of the box. You can even get Windows 10 32 bit. Windows 10 was released in 2015 but ran fine on computers much older than that.
Windows 10 will hit the mainstream EOL in about a year. If you are still on Windows 7 right now, might grab some more modern hardware and go directly to Win11.
If you don’t have the budget to upgrade – just go with any of the *BSDs or even Linux. But please, please stop using Win7.
My favourite Windows release ever, and IMO the most beautiful and complete.
Microsoft never fixed the Windows Updates service for it, but otherwise it was superb.
Nothing before or after was as polished and loved by MS themselves.
Nah, Win 2000 was the best.
Finally directX in NT, no need for half assed windows anymore.
Yes it was in NT4 but only software and only dx3 IIRC.
I was so sad when forced to “update” to XP whjen DX stopped being updated in 2000. Required slight effort to remove the fisher price interface.
Thankfully windows vista came and saved us (at SP1 level where is was basically win 7 beta) becuase we actually needed 64 bit (to actually use the ram) and the XP beta was never updated.
So 7 to me, just Vista SP2. Which I learn now on extended support existed. I wonder if it was really even more win 78 than vista sp1.
As for favourite (which is a silly idea as you can have many favouritres for different reasons), Probably the non buyable Win 95 OSR2. When windows become a proper OS. The sold win 95 was not, pretty much win 3.11 + Win32S in a different package, pre DirectX. OSR2 however such a pitty it was never sold or an update for people having win 95 release.
WIn 98 took too long to comer. WIn 95 OSR2.5 was win 98 (all the updates of fat32 from osr2 and all the ie4 intergration of osr 2.5 (not necicerilly a good thing until hardware caught up, yes hold back 2.5, no reason for 2.0 (well probably given the ridiculously low requirements for win 95! I can see why they did it, but no oem release to buy either in those days, but buuilders did not care the serial was stil 111-111-111111 of 77-777-777777 (or other things divisible by 7 overall)).
If you ask me my “favourite” Windows, I will say Windows 2000 ( by far ). That said, I could totally use Windows 7 today and be perfectly happy and productive while Windows 2000 is completely unusable. The biggest problem is that Windows 2000 is 32 bit only as you say. Show stopper (not just for the RAM but for the apps).. But the driver model is also obsolete. And there are a surprising number of missing APIs for basic things like the networking calls your browser will use or other important bits of plumbing like Unicode. I would love to run Windows 2000 as my Windows in a VM even but there is just no point.
The “best” Windows before Windows 2000 was Windows 98R2 for sure. In my view, that was the peak of the DOS extender line.
Windows 10, specially the enterprise verions, are pretty good. I hope MS fixes W11 (or 12 or whatever) by 2035.
Windows 7 died on January 2023 when ESU ended and mainstream browsers dropped support. What’s the point of receiving OS updates when your browser has more than a year of security holes on its back or if you have to use obscure browsers of questionable maintenance status?
“Mozilla will provide security updates until at least March 2025 when the position will be re-evaluated.”
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support
YMMV, but for me this would be a useful data point if I had any usage scenario for Windows (let alone Win7) at this point.
ESUs were a stopgap. Sure, you were getting some fixed for vulnerabilities found – but you don’t benefit from the more modern and foundational security technology in Win11.
Operating systems are generally tied to the underlying hardware. Many are unaware of what Windows version they have and they won’t manually upgrade. Hardware doesn’t last till eternity and people eventually get new operating systems as a result or buying new computers. Expect this to happen with Windows 10 as well as it did with Windows XP and 7.
I love buying those old computers off people. I am typing this on a 2013 Macbook Air ( running Linux ). Windows 7 was state-of-the-art in 2013 as Windows 10 was not released until 2015. I am looking forward to some amazing hardware deals when Windows 10 goes out of support.
Windows 11 is a new beast for the Windows world. Though people like to stay on older versions of Windows, the situation for decades now has been that the “next” version of Windows ran just fine on your old hardware. Hardware was not holding you back. With Windows 11, many users are going to be forced to upgrade their hardware to upgrade Windows.
At least that is the official stance. We all know that Windows 11 will actually run just fine on most Windows 10 era hardware. Many users may choose to “hack” their Windows 11 install to avoid a hardware upgrade. Many won’t though and we are going to see more hardware abandoned than ever before, especially by businesses. We are likely to see a larger than ever percentage of people staying on the old version without security updates as well. That could be a nightmare.
Speaking of Windows 7 – probably few people noticed that on Thursday, October 10, Thunderbird 115.16 appeared on Mozilla servers. Wasn’t it announced anywhere along with the information about the extension of the release of Firefox 115 ESR? Similarly to the release of Firefox 115, all versions are available – including versions for Macs and Linux systems.