by Martin Brinkmann on January 22, 2019 in Windows – 13 comments
The last twelve months of official unpaid support for Windows 7 have started; Microsoft’s, still very popular, operating system will receive the last batch of updates in early January 2020.
Extended support ends in January 2020 and while organizations may pay Microsoft to get an additional three years of security updates, no such option exists for Home customers.
It won’t be possible, likely, to extend the end of support, like on Windows XP or Vista systems, by installing compatible Server patches as Windows Server 2008 R2 support ends in January 2020 as well.
Tip: check out our overview of Windows versions and support end here.
Microsoft wants that Windows 7 customers and organizations upgrade their devices to the company’s Windows 10 operating system. While it is theoretically possible to upgrade to Windows 8.1, it would extend the end of support issue by just three years.
Microsoft guaranteed to support Windows 10, the last version of Windows according to Microsoft officials, until at least 2025. It is unclear what is going to happen in 2025 though.
Microsoft broke with the “a new operating system every three years” rule when it released Windows 10. The company did not release Windows 11 in 2018 which it would support until 2028. While there is a chance for a major refresh in 2025, all of that is pure speculation at this point in time.
Windows 10 software compatibility
Software compatibility should not keep companies and users from making the switch according to Microsoft. The company created a special program, called Desktop App Assure, in which it analyzed 41,000 applications for Windows 10 compatibility.
7000 out of those 41,000 applications had the potential for compatibility concerns according to the Desktop App Assure team; only 49 of those, however, had compatibility issues. Microsoft fixed compatibility issues for “many” of these applications.
The company failed to provide the list of programs that are not compatible with Windows 10. Organizations may contact Microsoft’s Desktop App Assure team to resolve compatibility issues with software on Windows 10.
Details on how to contact the team have been published on the Microsoft 365 blog.
The company published a video in October 2018 entitled “What is Desktop App Assure and Manage Win32 apps with Intune”.
Closing Words
I’d say that software compatibility was never the major problem when it came to Windows 10 adoption; Microsoft looking into this is still appreciated, though.
Now You: Do you use windows 10? What is keeping you, if not?