Microsoft warns mainstream Windows 7 support ends Jan 2015

by Mark Tyson on 9 July 2014, 08:45

Tags: Windows 7, PC

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Microsoft has made an announcement stating that several of its products will be reaching the end of mainstream support in six months time. The products include Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft usually provides mainstream support for its products for a five-year period, where the company provides free updated features and/or performance enhancements which include but are not limited to security updates. After this period Microsoft starts providing extended support for the product, where users receive free security fixes but pay for other types of updates, typically for five years also.

Free mainstream support for all versions of Windows 7 will end on 13 Jan 2015, but the company has promised to provide security patches through to 2020, according to Business Insider. This notice of intent from Redmond could affect the decisions of some businesses which are currently migrating away from Windows XP and on to Windows 7 rather than Windows 8.X. However, as seen with XP, Microsoft has previously pushed back end of support dates.

The end of mainstream support date for Windows 8.X is 9 Jan 2018. For further future-proofing you might wait to buy PCs with the next version of Windows, 'Threshold', which is expected to debut in April 2015.

Other products reaching the end of mainstream support in January 2015 include Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010, Windows Storage Server 2008, Dynamics C5 2010, NAV 2009 and NAV 2009 R2. Windows Phone 7.8 mainstream support ends even sooner – 9th September this year.

Patch Tuesday

Microsoft has also issued six security bulletins for all versions of its IE and Windows on July 2014 Patch Tuesday.

The first critical patch within the crop is one which "resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and twenty-three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer." The other critical patch fixes a vulnerability in Windows Journal; apparently after opening a "specially crafted Journal file" you could be left open to remote code execution.

You can find official information about all the patches here.

HEXUS Forums :: 30 Comments

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Posted by mtyson - Wed 09 Jul 2014 08:49
While you are updating you might as well check that you have the latest Flash plugin (14,0,0,145 ) as this popular plugin was subject to a Priority 1 update yesterday.
Posted by Corky34 - Wed 09 Jul 2014 09:02
I guess they don't want another XP situation, although i can't see many people warming to the direction Microsoft is taking Windows.
Rumors are saying Windows 9 is going to require a Microsoft account to activate it, don't fancy having my credit card details and such stored with Microsoft, or the ability for Microsoft to deactivate my copy of Windows when ever they choose.
Posted by cptwhite_uk - Wed 09 Jul 2014 09:39
Is it just me, or does 5 years seem like too short a time span to support an operating system? I realise the rate of new tech adoption is faster these days, but there will be some people would bought Windows 7 machines potentially less than 2 years ago (pre-Windows 8 release) now looking at their PC not obtaining security updates within 3 years of purchase.

Although debatable, given Microsoft's domination of the desktop environment, I would've expected security support for a minimum of 5 years after the product is discontinued. Surely that would be a more sensible measure of how long a product is supported, instead of initial release date, to give customers a degree of confidence when purchasing.

I realise this isn't going to be practical for all situations, maybe some kind of scaling for support time span could be implemented based on market share or units sold?

Given Microsoft's size and customer base I think they need to take more responsibility for these products.
Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH - Wed 09 Jul 2014 09:45
Security support is still there until 2019. What you might not see is other things like new versions of IE working under Windows 7.
Posted by yeeeeman - Wed 09 Jul 2014 09:57
I do not even use IE, so it is allright. Unless they release a better version of Windows, they can talk about ending support as much as they want. I know a ton of people who are still using XP because it is good enough. Even though they stopped supporting it. It's not like their support is overly important for a regular user. If you are a power user, it is a different story alltogether.

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