Microsoft: Enjoy your Windows 7 while you can (until early 2020)

If you are a gamer there is a high chance that you are on Windows 7. If that’s your case, we have bad news: Microsoft will stop supporting the system in January 2020. This means that you have about a year to move to Windows 10.

 End of support doesn’t mean that Windows 7 will magically stop booting on the day Microsoft decides to pull the plug. It only means, that users will lose access to security updates that are released monthly. On the 14th of January 2020, Microsoft will release the last batch of updates for Windows 7 and any newly discovered vulnerabilities will be left unpatched.

Enterprise customers will have an option to receive security updates through January 2023, but it won’t be for free. Windows XP went through the similar process in its fading years.

 We know that transition to a new system is most often an unpleasant process, especially considering privacy concerns that plague Windows 10. People are very slow to adopt new system even despite the decision of Microsoft to allow every Windows 7 and Windows XP user to move to it’s latest operating system for free during the first year after release.

 According to StatCounter, the amount of users who adopted Windows 10 surpassed Windows 7 in December of 2017. There is still about 7.3% of users on Windows 8.1, one of the least popular operating systems by Microsoft.

The good news is that Microsoft doesn’t plan to release new desktop operating systems in the foreseeable future and Windows 10 will be supported for decades. The bad news is that developers of the OS force non-security updates at least once a year and there is no way to opt out.