It does have to be said that running a 10 year old Microsoft OS might not be the wisest decision; though it is better than running one 18 years old. However, as we learned in 2017 many businesses are not even close to adopting Windows 10 on the majority of their systems. There are numerous reasons for that delay, from licensing through security to privacy not to mention the interface is different enough to upset many executive level users.
That hasn't stopped Microsoft from once again displaying splash screens on Windows 7 machines, as KB4493132 rolls out to those with automatic updates enabled. Thankfully it does not attempt to fool you into updating by changing the way they close window button works but then again, the update is no longer free. The Inquirer, as you might expect, is as enthused about this as most users.
"HERE WE GO AGAIN. Two years on from Updategate, Microsoft is back to posting nag screens on its outgoing operating system."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- It’s been a long wait, but Bill and Ted 3: Face the Music is happening @ Ars Technica
- Stop us if you're getting deja-vu: Uber used spyware to nobble dial-a-ride rival, this time Down Under, allegedly @ The Register
- Microsoft brings Defender AV software to Macs for the first time @ The Inquirer
- Falling NAND flash prices to drive SSD adoption in enterprise, datacenter apps @ DigiTimes
- Our Skyborg (actual US govt program) will be just like IBM Watson, beams Air Force bod @ The Register
- For Years, Hundreds of Millions of Facebook Users Had Their Account Passwords Stored in Plain Text and Searchable By Thousands of Facebook Employees @ Slashdot
This is the kind of popup
This is the kind of popup they SHOULD be doing. People should not be running an OS that isn’t getting security updates.
Really if you are a
Really if you are a enterprise/volume licensing customer you can purchase extended windows 7 security updates until 2023. So that’s just as what happened with Windows XP when MS had do give in to their enterprise clients wishes!
Do you care to even Guess what it costs a business to have it’s mission critical application software vetted/certified for a new OS! And that’s quite a bit more expensive than just the licensing costs of any OS/New OS.
That’s Mission Critical software that really has to not fail or that’s potentially millions of dollars in lost revenues! The licensing costs of any MS OS is peanuts compared to the costs of any enterprise’s Mission Critical applications software.
Businesses spend billions more on their mission critical software than on MS’s new and shiny eternal Beta edition 10!
So windows 7 for many businesses will be the better choice until 2023 and that Extended 7 lincening is just a little little tiny drop in the bucket compared to what it costs to get all the enterprise’s custom software solutions vetted and certified to work with any new OS. And that’s doubly so for that rolling cockup Known as windows 10.
Did you Know that windows 8/8.1 is relatively the same as windows 7, with some minor tweaks and that TIFKAM UI so poorly Tacked on. So MS has to patch windows 8.1 until 2023 anyways. The Lords in Redmond do pay a little bit more attention to their enterprise clients and that money will walk if MS would have balked at allowing windows 7 to become the new XP for millions of enterprise customers.
This is not about any Billy Bob Gamers who really have no clue as to what it costs to have written and what it costs($$$$$$) to maintain any enterprise’s Mission Critical software. Really do some folks even think before they even attempt to comment concerning the real world and the costs of software used to manage a business, and that’s why many businesses will gladly pay MS for any extended Windows 7 support for 3 more years after 2020.
Really some folks are clueless and it’s the same folks all the time unable to even deduce what the real world is like and the actual costs of IT/Programming where $82,240(Just for average the yearly salery for a bog standard progremmer) and a systems analyst($102,860) or an IT manager($151,881 to $188,043) and IT suppot Technician $38,143 to $52,148!
Really Businesses have to call in extra outside help come Vetting/Certification time and take some server resources out of production to be used as testing platforms. And here you just thought that it was the pittance cost of some OS license only and the OS and hardware costs are dwarfed by the costs of that mission critical software that just has to work each and every hour of every damned day of the year and has to undergo a very costly vetting/certification process each and every damned time that a some New and shiny MS OS is forced on the enterprise end users!
Yep, I’m pretty familiar with
Yep, I’m pretty familiar with business cases needing to upgrade Windows. I’m low-rung IT at a Fortune 500 company, so I’m the boots-on-the-ground for upgrading a lot of systems. We don’t pay for the extended support. So when security updates stop, you must upgrade or get put behind a firewall with very limited intranet and no internet access. We did this going from XP to 7 successfully, and will do it again for 7 to 10.
So of course there are exceptions to the “upgrade everything!” rule. I was more talking about home users needing this popup.
There are some CNC milling
There are some CNC milling machines that will always be running the OS that came with the equipment and then there are some Enterprises that will spin up some KVM/Xen based VM hosted XP Instances for some of their more arcane needs where the folks who wrote the application are no longer in business and that’s the only software that works on XP and not later systems.
Home users need to be able to tell the Popup to go away for good after the popup appears for the first time and no one wants nagware.
The folks that have OEM laptops that work perfectly fine on windows 7/8.1 but have older diecrete mobile GPU hardware that’s considered legacy by that GPU’s maker need the option of staying with 7, or obtaining 8.1, because Laptops can mostly not have their Discrete Mobile GPUs updated like PC users can.
There are plenty of AMD Terscale Rebrand Laptops out there being sold as late as 2012-2017 that will have problems on windows 10, with all of windows 10’s WDDM version updates. Older GPUs may work or they may not but consumers should not be forced to give up their working laptop hardware just because the OS maker makes things newer. Microsoft needs to be offering some consumers extended windows 7 support or give those same users the option of trying a windows 8.1 build because that’s relatively windows 7 under the hood with minimal WDDM changes and 8.1’s TIFKAM can be fixed with some third party software.
HP Business laptops are full of SKUs that came with Terascale Rebrands so even if the laptop’s discrete mobile GPU starts with the 7000 series that’s not a good inducator that the mobile GPU is GCN based. Those Probooks where on sale at microcenter as brand new laptops on up until 2017 and there are still overstock new laptops that still have Terascale rebrand discrete mobile GPUs as recently as 2017.
They are still selling refurbished Ivy Bridge generation laptops with really nice Quad Core i7s and a lot of those laptops are using Terascale(Turks) discrete mobile GPUs from AMD(Rebrands).
If there is a market for some laptops users having to stick with windows 7/8.1 then Microsoft should offer those users an option of extended 7 security updates because MS is already going to be doing that security update work anyways for Volume Licensees and Enterprise customers.
Windows 8 and later pretty much killed of my yearly laptop update cadence since around 2013-2014 and my older laptops work just fine for Internet Browsing. After 2020 I quess if MS does not want any of my money then I’ll go with Linux Mint on the Sandy Bridge/eariler laptops and the Ivy Brdge laptop that’s running windows 7 came with a Windows 8 Pro License so that’s getting installed and updated in place to 8.1 and will be good to go until 2023 when 8.1 goes EOL.
I’m still able to hold off until there are some Linux OS based laptop OEMs that may start offering laptops with Raven Ridge APU options. AMD really needs to actually fund/assist at least one Linux OS Based Laptop OEM to begin offering Raven Ridge APU Options. AMD partners with GPU AIB makers so maybe AMD needs to actually Partner with one Linux OS based Laptop OEM and get consumers some non MS, non Intel, and non Nvidia, Linux OS based OEM Laptop options that come with AMD’s APUs.
All of the software that I use, mostly open source, works on Windows and Linux so probably the older laptops will do fine on Linux Mint. I’m good until 2023 on my Ivy Bridge/AMD discrete mobile laptop that’s socketed by the way and can have the CPU replaced if that goes bad. There are pleny of used parts for that but the laptop’s GPU is soldered to the MB.
Agreed here. Ordinary people
Agreed here. Ordinary people need the kick to shift over to what will, for them, be a better OS.
The dribbly anti-Windows 10 types below seem to think it’s all about them – it’s not, you guys are a single percentile rounding error. All this public ranting does more harm than good by encouraging people who aren’t very tech literate to stay on an insecure OS.
To bad for you Bumpkins out
To bad for you Bumpkins out there because you are the lowest commom denominator that the shills pander to!
OSs really do not go out of date if they are properly maintained and can still be revenue generators as windows 7 extended updates will generate revenues for M$!
People who are not very tech literate can get phones and tablets and go on from there becuse it takes brains to properly make use of PC/Laptops anyways. They have iOS and Android for the brain dead Bumpkins so let them eat app store.
You just enjoy that Bend Over and repeated forcing and think that others also should enjoy a good reaming with every forced up the dark passage windows 10 update that breaks things and robs folks of their time!
Enjoy your eternal BETA OS version that’s never going to be anything other than a great nuisance to most folks that will be looking for alternatives to M$ and its crazy new and shiny brdge to nowhere with more borking each and every forced update cycle!
Why can’t Microsoft give
Why can’t Microsoft give people the OPTION of using the win7 user interface? Even after 4 years of using the win 10 ui, I hate it with every fiber of my being.
Yeah… not downgrading from
Yeah… not downgrading from windows 7. If I change OS, it will be to linux mint.
You are losing customers Microsoft.
And please get rid of the abhorrent captcha. I have to click through that trash ~4 times just to comment.
Ditto. Of those still running
Ditto. Of those still running Windows 7 as their main OS these days, most will probably not make the jump to W10, as otherwise they would have done so already some time ago…
I agree on all points. I
I agree on all points. I have no interest in ever changing my one remaining Windows 7 box to 10. I only use it for gaming and some odd Windows apps. Apps that probably would run fine under Wine. Given that more and more games run on Linux, the appeal of having a Windows box at all is decreasing for me.
And, yes, get rid of the damn reCAPTCHA! I’m freaking logged in, why do you need a human verification? How many time do I have to prove I’m a human? You think my account got taken over with each post? Put on on account setup, but afterwards? That makes no sense. And it seems to be set to ultra paranoia. I have to so a dozen freaking challenges. WTF?
Shit or get off the pot. You
Shit or get off the pot. You can move to Linux, full-scale? Go for it! The rest of us don’t care.
If you’re going to act like a
If you’re going to act like a pro-Windows troll, why not respond to Wall-O’-Text guy directly? He hates “Micro$oft”, and he’d be happy to tell you why you’re an idiot, in 500 words or more.
What’s the matter? You aren’t…..afraid, are you? Can’t handle the onslaught so you only target normies with low-tier bait? Pathetic.
And I don’t care that you
And I don’t care that you don’t care, but thanks for feeling you needed to reply. Go troll elsewhere.
But, but… we need the rest
But, but… we need the rest of you to care.
Please, please, care. Care much. Just care. It is important that the rest of you care. I can’t live without the rest of you caring. Please, have mercy!
Really MS is still not
Really MS is still not getting it that most folks do not want that Tiled Crap or some eternal game of privacy whack-a-mole after each forced Update! Make 10 look and act like windows 7, Sans all that 10 app store, spyware, adware, crapware, candy crush, bloatware, and rolling trainwreck creepy feature creep every 6 months.
I’m lucky My Business Laptop came with a windows 8 Pro License with downgrade rights to windows 7 Pro! So the Laptop’s OEM(in that terrible time that TIFKAM was actually only called Metro) gladly performed the Windows 7 DownUpgrade at the factory from Windows 8 Pro to Windows 7 Pro. So I can at least avoid the dreaded 10 on one of my laptops until 2023. That’s after I reimage my Laptop with the windows 8 recovery DVD and then do an in place upgrade to 8.1 and install some third party UI software to make that TIFKAM abomination get out of my face and the UI look and act more like windows 7’s UI.
How many Laptop OEMs are really going to Certify any Pre GCN, Terascale Micro-Arch based AMD discrete mobile GPUs to be vetted and certified to work under Windows 10’s WDDM that’s undergone more revisions than all the previous MS OSs’ WDDM revisions combined! Really MS where is that 1 billion windows 10 install base and the current windows 10 installed based includes more than just PC/Laptops so there are probably a larger percentage of PCs/Laptops that are still going to be on windows 7 when it goes EOL.
I’d rather That MS get real and offer consumers that have older laptop hardware the option of purchasing extended windows 7 security updates until 2023. I’d gladly pay $100-$150 pre year for extended windows 7 security updates.
MS would you rather have my $150 per year on my older laptops that did not come with a windows 8/8.1 pro license or no money at all and me Installing some Linux Distro!
That’s Because I control my hardware and not Microsoft! I will not be Update Forced by any OS maker, and I really wish that some Linux OS based Laptop OEM would begin offering AMD Raven Ridge based APUs on some Linux OS laptop SKUs! There will be a DX12 to Vulkan translation layer and Native Vulkan Games also. It’s your choice, Microsoft, keep up with that windows 10 nonsense and Linux will get that critical mass 10% OS market share and then the money will really begin flowing into the Linux ecosystem to allow for an even larger Linux OS market share on PCs/Laptops.
I’m safe from 10 on my one windows 7 Pro laptop that actually came with a windows 8 Pro license, with Windows 7 Pro “Downgrade” rights that was actually the only way the laptop’s OEM could get my business in that dank smelling dark time of Metro before it became TIFKAM! And those damned tiles are still hanging round on 10. If I can not Purchase extended windows 7 security updates like the enterprise/volume licensing customers then my 3 other laptops will get Linux Mint most likely come 2020! But there will not be a windows 10 for me unless windows 10 becomes more like windows 7, and all the windows 10 nonsense gone by by!
Linux Mint, here I come!
Linux Mint, here I come! Steam Proton is a Godsend.
Windows XP isn’t 24 years
Windows XP isn’t 24 years old.
wonder what my fingers were
wonder what my fingers were thinking when I typed that