Windows 7 goes end-of-life in a month

There’s just one month to go before the operating system, which debuted in 2009 and is considered by purists as the ‘last great’ edition of Windows will stop receiving security updates from 14 January, making it officially a liability in organisations that continue to run it.

From January, you’ll start to get full-screen pop-ups warning you that it’s time to upgrade, unless your organisation has paid for Extended Support from Microsoft.

This wind-down has been much more measured than the end of Windows XP, but as a result, awareness is low, and as a result, 33.7 per cent of desktop/laptop machines were still running the soon-to-be-erstwhile OS. At the time XP went, usage was already below a quarter.

Many organisations have shied away from upgrading because Windows 7 works and there were some spectacular consequences for the few firms that updated to Windows 8, making the jump to ‘10 seem very risky.

However, that decision looks set to bite them in the bum, as, given Christmas, it seems unlikely that many firms will meet the deadline, meaning they’ll have to either take the risk or pay the fee to extend.

Source: The Inquirer.