News - Windows 7 won't be available on consumer PCs after 31st October

[HEXUS]

However date of Windows 7 Professional PCs end of sales is "not yet established".

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[DemonHighwayman]

You would think they would extend windows 7's life span given the general hatred (myself included) for windows 8 and 8.1. Just last week I was tasked with finding a new PC for a couple on a very restricted budget, they told me it wasn't to have windows 8 by any means. The only thing I could recommend was a barebones box by Novatech without an OS or HDD. Luckily the couple still have a copy of there win7 cd key.

Anyway do MS not understand that business users and probably most folks in general don't want to learn a stupid mobile based O.S ?

[Arthran]

They do, which is why if the rumours I've heard are correct, in 8.2 (possibly 8.3) we get the option of metro OR start menu.

Dont get me wrong, I'm in the metro hatred club (It's fine on my tablet, but why are you forcing me to use metro on a server with server 2012?), But it does sound like they are slowly listening.

[crossy]

You would think they would extend windows 7's life span given the general hatred (myself included) for windows 8 and 8.1. Just last week I was tasked with finding a new PC for a couple on a very restricted budget, they told me it wasn't to have windows 8 by any means. The only thing I could recommend was a barebones box by Novatech without an OS or HDD. Luckily the couple still have a copy of there win7 cd key. Anyway do MS not understand that business users and probably most folks in general don't want to learn a stupid mobile based O.S ?

I wouldn't worry too much - after all there's no way that the deadline on Win 7 Pro will be before 31st October, so you've still got time to get a few licenses. And personally, I suspect that we'll see an end-of-year deadline for Win 7 Pro, heck, maybe even into next year (to dovetail with that ending of mainstream support)

Trouble is that there's not much in it for Microsoft to let you stay with Windows 7, they NEED you to run out and buy that shiny new copy of Windows 8.x to keep the $$$'s rolling in.

And I guess for businesses, most will have access to extended support, so they've got a while to plan their jump off of '7. Personally speaking I'm definitely NOT looking forward to that time when this laptop has to be "upgraded" from 7 to 8 - luckily (?) there's software issues at the moment that prevent it.

[simonpreston]

Not a big deal anyway. You can still buy Windows XP, if you so desire. I imagine Windows 7 will be available for a good long while yet.

[Saracen]

They do, which is why if the rumours I've heard are correct, in 8.2 (possibly 8.3) we get the option of metro OR start menu.

...

Well, I'll believe it when I see it.

But we can't stand in the way of "progress".

Win 7 - highly popular OS
Win 8.0 - add MUI and remove Start button and start menu.
Win 8.1 - add the start button back (sort-of)
Win 8.2 - add the start menu back
Win 8.3 - remove MUI as default.

We then have the "progress", right back to where we started.


And yes, before anyone points it out, I know Win8 wasn't just about the GUI/MUI, even if it feels like it from the furore MS' s arrogance over this caused.

Just think, turning a silk purse into a sow's ear by shoving a horrible start screen on people whether they wanted it or not, when they could have avoided all the argument by just giving users the damn choice. Idiots. All it would have taken was for MS to include a user option, functionally equivalent to something like Start8, or Classic Shell.

Instead, IF these rumours are right, it's going to take 1 year plus, and two revisions, to do what anyone with an IQ above 3 would have done from the start (excuse pun).

[g8ina]

Seems every other release is rubbish while the other half is brilliant, therefore, just wait till Win9 comes out ?

[azrael-]

Seems as if Microsoft wants Win7 to die as quickly as possible, but without alienating all of its customers. It certainly doesn't want another WinXP on its hands.

That said, I'm kind of worried by the end of support date of 13 January 2015. True, there's extended support until January 2020, but these will mostly (only?) be bug fixes.

[crossy]

Seems as if Microsoft wants Win7 to die as quickly as possible, but without alienating all of its customers. It certainly doesn't want another WinXP on its hands.That said, I'm kind of worried by the end of support date of 13 January 2015. True, there's extended support until January 2020, but these will mostly (only?) be bug fixes.

If I was Microsoft, I'd be quite happy to have another XP - better that than folks running off to OS X or Linux. But like you the EOS date into next year is having me hope that Windows 9 follows the tick-tock theory and we end up with a good OS as a result.

Seems every other release is rubbish while the other half is brilliant, therefore, just wait till Win9 comes out ?

You'll get abuse from the Vista fans (yes, both of them!), for that first bit.

It's a good question though - what can we expect from Windows 9 wrt UI? I can't see Microsoft dropping MUI - it's too deeply entrenched in their "one UI to rule them all" method - but they're not alone in believing that snake oil (yes, that's you I'm talking about Canonical)

So if we can't go MUI-less, then the way it's been deployed has to be a lot more sensible than it has been so far. A desktop PC isn't a fancy tablet - so a user of a desktop expects niceties like multiple/tiled/overlapped windows, more than one app running at a time, etc. I'm not going to being to attempt to put forward a "best" solution, but it'll be interesting to see what the "experts" from Redmond come up with.

One thing I will say though - if Windows 9 doesn't move on from the Windows 8.0 UI, then Microsoft will have done more to promote desktop Linux than anyone else. Which would be ironic...

[azrael-]

Perhaps, for the casual onlooker, we should clarify, that in this regard MUI stands for Metro User Interface and not Multilingual User Interface. Lest someone be confused...

[whitetop]

well thanks its been good but on to linux i go

[VijaySathyan]

No way I am upgrading to Win8 anytime soon.