The tech news world is abuzz with dire warnings to IT managers and consumers alike. The blogosphere and technology news sites, ever hungry for more page views (more readers) love to sensationalize by publishing information, while true, is misleading.<\/p>\n
You may have read that support for Windows 7 ends on January 13, 2015. This has caused panic from users of Windows 7 who have felt blindsided by Microsoft. Some of these bloggers and so-called journalists continue to fan the fire by continually comparing the end of support for Windows 7 to the end of support for Windows XP.<\/p>\n
It’s true that Microsoft will end support for Windows 7 in January 2015, however the word that journalists and bloggers omit is “mainstream”. Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 7 in January 2015 just like they ended “mainstream support” for Windows XP on April 14, 2009. And here all you XP users thought that support ended on April 8, 2014, right?<\/p>\n
The end of mainstream support of a Microsoft operating system does not mean the end of support. It does not mean the end of updates or security fixes or operating system security updates and patches. Windows XP extended support ended on April 8, 2014 – that was the day that Microsoft stopped updating Windows XP and stopped offering security updates, patches, fixes and other Windows updates.<\/p>\n
Mainstream support, ironically, isn’t something most consumers need be concerned about. It’s the end of extended support that matters. Extended support for Windows 7 ends on January 14, 2020. That’s the date Windows 7 users need to be focused on, not the end of mainstream support coming in January 2015. Relax, all you Windows 7 users, you can use Windows 7 safely until 2020. For those of you still using Windows Vista, extended support for that operating system ends on April 11, 2017.<\/p>\n
So what’s the difference between mainstream support and extended support? According to Microsoft:<\/p>\n
Mainstream support\u2014Microsoft will offer mainstream support for a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product is released, whichever is longer. For example, if you buy a new version of Windows and five years later another version is released, you will still have two years of support left for the previous version.<\/p>\n
Extended support\u2014Microsoft will offer extended support for either a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability, or for 2 years after the second successor product (two versions later) is released, whichever is longer.<\/p>\n
Learn more at:\u00a0http:\/\/go.microsoft.com\/fwlink\/?LinkId=204452<\/a><\/p>\n Confused? Don’t worry about it. So are most bloggers and technology writers. The only thing you, as a Windows user, need to worry about is the end of extended support. After the end of extended support for any version of Windows, you cannot use that version of Windows safely.<\/p>\n Need more information? See\u00a0http:\/\/windows.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/lifecycle<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The tech news world is abuzz with dire warnings to IT managers and consumers alike. The blogosphere and technology news sites, ever hungry for more page views (more readers) love to sensationalize by publishing information, while true, is misleading. You may have read that support for Windows 7 ends on January 13, 2015. This has caused panic from\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7957,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7956\/revisions\/7957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}