It’s the end of an era. Today’s date, January 14, has been on the books for years now, and it’s the day that support ends for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. More specifically, extended support is ending for Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 and 2.
[…]There are, of course, workarounds. Microsoft is offering Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for those willing to pay up, and it’s only available for Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise. The price is going to be per-machine, and it will double every year. In other words, if you’ve got a business with multiple Windows 7 PCs, it’s going to be costly to keep them on the legacy OS. ESUs will be available for three years. You can get ESUs through volume licensing or through Microsoft 365.
Windows 7 is 11 years old by now, and moving the operating system strictly to paid maintenance seems acceptable – you can’t expect operating systems to be maintained forever. This means that unless they’re planning on being irresponsible, Windows 7 users will have to start moving to Windows 10. They might want to download one of the many debloat programs, followed by a a tool that gives them strict control over Windows 10’s leaky privacy settings.
Or, you know, move to something else entirely.
I’m taking this opportunity to remove the last couple of things in my house that still run Windows, since I don’t feel it offers me anything I need anymore.
Serious question though to those in the know- What does Windows 10 really offer that Windows 7 doesn’t? I’m not talking about additional stuff that has since been developed by Microsoft or by third parties, but rather what Windows 10 as a platform can do that Windows 7 couldn’t be made to do? I struggle to think of anything useful to me, hence why I left the ecosystem.
This is a genuine question, not trying to be snarky. I’m sure there are things that I haven’t considered.
At a platform level – DX12, WinRT (nice for sandboxing at least), WSL, ongoing security updates. Wifi randomises the mac address for privacy. Installing on new hardware. Windows containers.
Windows 7 still used subpixel hinting in ClearType, that was replaced with greyscale in the 8-era to better support rotating screens.
New built-in features that you could probably replicate elsewhere – virtual desktops, nested hypervisors, the Win+Shift+S screenshot tool, improved terminal, LF line ending support in Notepad. And of course – two control panels :^)
But are those things impossibly difficult to retrofit into Windows 7? I mean WSL wasn’t even part of Windows 10 until a couple of years ago. Security updates are surely only a feature of a new OS if they’re no longer willing to provide them for the older ones?
Don’t get me wrong, I totally get that they can’t continue to support a product forever since they’re a business with shareholders and they have to have something to drive new sales, but to me the revamp that became Windows 8, 8.1 and finally Windows 10 just doesn’t feel like it offers anything interesting to ‘most normal people’.
I know I’m totally unqualified to debate this since I use Linux with a pretty ‘classic paradigm’ desktop but it feels a little like planned obsolescence to something that was perfectly serviceable for most users.
(I just realised the guy commenting below me used the exact words! :D)
//edit : I just wanted to add that this is all borne out of my frustration that Microsoft decided to turn Windows into a service, but didn’t use Windows 7 as the base for that.
I’m with you because I sometimes still use Windows 2000 and XP on machines that can only run them, and quite surprisingly, are as fast as the Windows 7 or 10 machines, user interface speaking. Of course doing 3D, video processing and stuff is more comfortable on newer machines, but doing office work, browsing the web, my old machines are still performing like day one. That’s to say flawlessly.
And the additional “refinements” are obtained through third parties software, most of them being free. And I don’t give a sh*t about stakeholders.
If memory serves me right, once upon a time was https://winaero.com/blog/windows-xp-support-has-ended-today-a-farewell-to-the-venerable-os/
If memory serves me right https://winaero.com/blog/windows-xp-support-has-ended-today-a-farewell-to-the-venerable-os/
I’ve a similar situation, needing to support Legacy Apps within a Legacy OS.
But whenever possible I move stuff to Win 10 Pro as I find it superior to all other Windows releases. I’ve also been able to get it running with good performance on several old pieces of hardware, dependent on drivers of course!
All that is true but one of the main reasons for going towards 8, 8.1 and 10 was touch friendly UI, which Windows 7 lacked.
Almost everything new coming from Microsoft these days has touch friendly design. It can be seen from their hardware lineup as well.
No, those things are not impossibly difficult to retrofit into Windows 7. All it would require is to change the kernel from Windows 7 to the kernel from Windows 10 so all these features that thousands of developers have worked on for the last decade are now supported on Windows 7. Of course while doing that you would also need to add a lot of the new versions of the GUI components and their supporting libraries but that is also relatively simple to do. What you have created by now is actually Windows 10 minus a few components that you may or may not like.
Because that is actually exactly what Windows 10 is: A newer version of Windows 7 with a whole lot of updated fundamentals and many great features with some features that you might not like so much. If you liked Windows 7, I would highly recommend you to just try Windows 10 and find a way to configure it so it works in a way that you like. You do realise that Windows 10 can be configured and that many features can be enabled/disabled or even completely add/removed right? A great starterpoint would be to check out Windows PE (the most minimal version of Windows that would be useful for you) and play around with some of the dism.exe commands. Or just have a look at something like (now entirely legal!) https://www.hirensbootcd.org/ to see just how much of Windows 10 you can change.
Some more things about Windows 10 that I always miss when I have to use Windows 7:
* Resizable, snappable command prompt windows
* being able to use CTRL+C, CTRL+V in the command prompt
* many extra tools and options in existing commandline tools (dism.exe /online /export-driver)
* built-in iso-mounting
* Much simpler and faster patching through Windows Update
* Surprisingly good hardware support out of the box and through Windows Update
* Much more reliable base with far less “bit rot” (Windows getting slower/unstable after adding/removing software)
* Hyper-V and WSL
* Store (controversial, but I like having it anyway. Just remove it if you don’t like it)
* Troubleshooters that actually work and do something useful
* Windows Hello
* Touch-support
* Virtual Desktops
* Winkey+X (advanced context menu)
* Integration with Microsoft Account (Home) and Azure AD/Intune (Pro)
What I don’t like about Windows 10 (many of this also applies to 7):
* Many default settings, like hiding file extensions, are still set to “Home” even in “Pro”.
* Too many store apps installed by default (I always start with get-appxpackage | remove-appxpackage)
* Too much “noise” from the OS: Search, Cortana, OneDrive, Notifications, Ads
* Search and general file management (tip: Everything and Total Commander)
* Too much duplication. Especially the new Settings screen and the old Control Panel
The reason they are rebasing everything off Win10 is to make a new Windows Core centered common architecture, to make development easier.
Read up on OneCore.
TLDR: Windows 10 is a better Windows 7 but you need to tweak it a bit. Look into dism.exe and Windows 10 PE to get some ideas.
I wrote a big post explaining that backporting everything to Windows 7 doesn’t make sense and that you would be much better of changing to Windows 10 and then stripping the parts of Windows 10 that you don’t like. I suspect that post was removed because I mentioned a certain Windows 10 PE based bootable ISO that shows what a stripped down Windows 10 can be. (Just to be clear, that is not illegal anymore!)
I also mentioned a whole bunch of Windows 10 feature that are great and a couple that I don’t like and solutions/workarounds for them
Hopefully my post will be restored, otherwise I will just leave it at this
‘avgalen
TLDR: Windows 10 is a better Windows 7 but you need to tweak it a bit. Look into dism.exe and Windows 10 PE to get some ideas.’
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Why does this sound the same sort of garbage that came from the Gnome 3 supporters?
Because it is?
“What does Windows 10 really offer that Windows 7 doesn’t?”
(list of things in Win 10 that aren’t in Win 7)
“But are those things impossibly difficult to retrofit into Windows 7?”
MOOT POINT, they haven’t been retrofitted into Windows 7. They are literally things that Windows 10 offers that Windows 7 doesn’t.
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Support for new processors, although that is a result of intel and amd’s decision to stop offering drivers for win7, rather than some genuine capability of win10.
Yeah, I too hate planned obsolescence.
That’s how I determine when to update Windows – when I buy a new system that no longer has support for the older Windows for the hardware. As long as I can run a version on newer hardware, I won’t update. Of course, I use the current linux for day-to-day use. Windows is merely for gaming, and then, only games that don’t work in WINE.
hdjhfds,
Actually I recall that this wasn’t AMD or Intel’s doing, but rather microsoft’s.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-to-end-support-for-windows-7-and-8-on-new-pc-hardware/
For their part, AMD and Intel CPUs are highly backwards compatible and generally support very old operating systems just fine, even older than windows 7.
A more pressing roadblock is peripheral drivers (network/graphics/sound/etc). Although even then many of these drivers may be technically compatible between operating systems with compatible ABIs.
Has anyone actually tried windows 7 on new hardware? I wouldn’t be surprised if it just works, but it’s possible that windows 7 was updated at some to stop execution on new CPUs.
You could run it just fine. It just would absolutely refuse to get updates. Note that the rejection was server-side, i.e. at Microsoft’s end and had nothing to do with your local installation. If your system met certain criteria, you were not given updates. In an enterprise scenario with someone who could use WSUS to work around this you could still force these machines to update from your internal server, however this obviously would not work in a home situation for most people and they just upgraded to 10.
10 seems to have much better support for HD screens and adjusting it’s own GUI elements to match. Other than that it’s dozens of features that continue to get added, like the “night mode” blue light filter.
Underphil,
I’d classify updates into a few categories:
1. New drivers
2. Bug fixes
3. New features
Touch support, linux subsystem, etc can represent useful feature upgrades over previous versions of windows
4. Frivolous changes
Themes that change things arbitrarily but aren’t designed to improve the OS per say. Changing the control panel for no damn reason other than for changes sake. Shoving us into unpopular GUI paradigms.
I am biased as I’m not a fan of microsoft’s direction after windows 7 and I actually liked the windows 2k desktop interface. Nevertheless I still think it’s fair to say many people aren’t seeing as much value in upgrading. To be clear, some people really do appreciate the new features, but there’s no doubt in my mind that many people and especially businesses only want updates for #1 and #2. If microsoft made that available, it would undoubtedly be the most popular windows os. For years microsoft had a hell of a time getting people to upgrade from XP, and they did everything in their capacity to push people from windows 7 to 10, even to the point of deliberately confusing users into unintentionally upgrading.
Obviously this wasn’t always the case, historically new versions of windows brought about new business & productivity enhancements that pretty much sold themselves. This significant widespread drop in demand meant that microsoft had to shift to more profitable services, like becoming a software publishing middleman, user analytics & advertising. For many this just makes windows worse, but this is the direction the industry is moving in whether we like it or not.
Historically, new versions of windows brought obvious stability improvements. Ask that to anyone who moved from 3.0 to 3.1, or 95 to XP.
After XP, however, the stability improvements are not as obvious as they had been, if they are there at all.
So why would you need to replace something that works fine? For XP that reason was the 4 (2.5) GB memory limit. And for 7 even that is not an issue.
Someone mentioned the touch interface. Yeah, that makes 8 (and 10) stand out in comparison to 7. But that’s not something most people need or demand. We have been trained to use computers with keyboards and mouses for decades, and touch interfaces will probably become the primary interface only when our generation dies and post-millenials constitute the majority of computer users (and assuming that siri-alexa-echo thingies do not overtake touch as the primary interface)
hdjhfds,
You keep on asking why, but the answer is pretty strait forward when you look at things from microsoft’s perspective rather than as a user. CEOs work for shareholders who always expect to be pushing new products to generate revenue. However if microsoft were to stabilize what we already have/need and did not change the product in some way, then it would be the end of the company. Or at least it would be a shell of it’s former self. There would be a small team doing maintenance releases but little else. Maybe they could focus on new products other than windows, but given that windows is a cash cow and they have a desktop monopoly, is pretty obvious that microsoft would like to find ways to continue to monetize it. So while you have opinions about what’s best for you and businesses, etc, microsoft is looking at their interests, things like pushing people to app stores with 30% fees, private data collection, advertising, etc.
So, when you ask “why?” the answer is inevitably because microsoft sees it as the future of windows monetization and that’s all there is to it.
From a user perspective, well the reasons are more personal: there’s subjective tastes, some users always want the latest & greatest, some want new features, some were tricked by microsoft’s misleading dialog boxes, some bought a new computer and it simply came with windows 10, some genuinely didn’t want it but felt pressured by end of support.
Microsoft 365.
‘Windows 7 is 11 years old by now, and moving the operating system strictly to paid maintenance seems acceptable – you can’t expect operating systems to be maintained forever. This means that unless they’re planning on being irresponsible, Windows 7 users will have to start moving to Windows 10. They might want to download one of the many debloat programs, followed by a a tool that gives them strict control over Windows 10’s leaky privacy settings.
Or, you know, move to something else entirely.’
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Hey Thom, are you and others planning to shell out money out of *YOUR* pocket to buy people these upgrades?
If not, then you guys really and truly need to shut up.
Plus Windows 10 updates are not allowed on old hardware, so the request to update to Windows 10 is useless. You *have* to stay to Windows 7 no matter what.
If a person uses their computer for web surfing, reading emails, listening to music and watching YouTube videos, and are still on Windows 7 they can really run a Linux distro and still do all of that. My converted my father and use happily uses Kubuntu. Matter of fact KDE distro would be such a great fit for Windows 7 refugees.
Sure, but Windows 10 is such a pain in the ass for so simple reasons: when Windows 7 applied an update, there was a dialog box showing with a yellow banner asking to reboot or postpone 10 minutes. Even when the computer was idle (ie. doing background tasks like downloading from the internet) Windows 7 was waiting for the user’s permission to reboot. Not anymore. Now I often find my computer rebooted for unknown reason, my unsaved work lost and my downloads stopped in the middle because, you know, “security measures”.
why are you moaning about irritating things Windows 10 does in reply to a post saying to use Linux instead
Windows 10 is just about tolerable if you install Open Shell (what used to be called Classic Shell) to “fix” the abomination that is the Windows 10 Start Menu. I also add in 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to get seconds on my task bar clock (yep, Windows has code to display seconds, but no GUI option to turn them on – utter madness!).
Use Edge to load in Firefox and then hide the Edge icon 🙂 Disable Cortana (useless on most desktop PCs because you don’t have a microphone) and turn off as much telemetry as you can. Even after all that, it’s hard to keep control of your Windows 10 update schedule – it often kicks off without me doing anything, which can be annoying on low-end hardware.
I bought a low-end laptop recently and ended up putting Manjaro MATE Linux on it to dual boot with the WIndows 10 Home it came with. Well impressed with the hardware supporrt on Manjaro – most distros I tried on the laptop wouldn’t work with the wi-fi or touchpad…the latest 5.5 kernel from Manjaro now works with both!
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced : ShowSecondsInSystemClock (DWORD 32-bit) = 1, then reboot/logon
I don’t quite get the complaints. Upgrading to windows 10 is super super easy with the windows media download tool… Performed or on a bunch of computers with dubious licenses without issue.
Seems faster than Win7 even on my spinning rust hard drive PC.
Download the one-click windows debloat tool and everything is super!
“the one-click windows debloat tool” which is… ?
I had Windows 10 OEM-imposed on my Acer Nitro. Everything about it pissed me off.
However, the straw which broke the camel’s back was when it had overwritten my default browser setting from Firefox to Edge. A setting I had changed manually. Three times.
I killed both the system and recovery partitions the next day and tried putting Windows 7 on it, which it didn’t want to run on. Finally I went ahead and got Linux Mint on it, which actually turned it into a machine I can do some work on, imagine that.
All the venom aside, subsequent versions stopped being an obvious improvement for the user after Windows 95/98. All your sensibilities that you follow when using it haven’t changed since that time, even someone too young to remember them wouldn’t have much of a problem using it, as long as they could get over the icons. Every other improvement future versions brought could have just as well been implemented by means of (relatively heavy data-wise) updates. This wouldn’t have made them any money, however, so you’re being weaned, carefully but firmly, off the old system and onto the new one.
‘Kochise
Plus Windows 10 updates are not allowed on old hardware, so the request to update to Windows 10 is useless. You *have* to stay to Windows 7 no matter what.’
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What’s even funnier is that the Linux Distro’s that’s being recommended for people to install on these Win 7 machines* WON’T* even run on them because the vast majority of them have 32-bit processors which they no longer support, which is also funny because the people who advocate installing Linux on these machines are also the *BIGGEST* advocates of eliminating support in Linux Distros for the machines that use 32-bit processors,which shows just how clueless these people really are,,,,,,,
Indeed, so is it planned obsolescence ? Because my 32 bits machines still performs perfectly, slowly compared to today standard, but still, do the job. We used 32 bits machines for decades to do everyday stuff, and 64 bits haven’t drastically changed our way of life. Doing word documents or browsing the web doesn’t requires a super computer.