Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support For Older Intel Computers (computerworld.com) 383
An anonymous reader shares a report: If your PC doesn't run Streaming Single Instructions Multiple Data (SIMD) Extensions 2, you apparently won't be getting any more Win7 patches. At least, that's what I infer from some clandestine Knowledge Base documentation changes made in the past few days. Even though Microsoft says it's supporting Win7 until January 14, 2020, if you have an older machine -- including any Pentium III -- you've been blocked, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Windows 7: The Best Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 7 is the Best Windows. , better than all versions which came before it and after it. The only thing it lacks is out of the box USB 3.0 support. The drivers not on the install disk but you ca add it.. That's all. It's everything you need.
Windows 8 was a stupid movie. "Let's change the UI, because, fuck it, let's change the UI." Nothing else.
And Windows 10 with its intrusive spying and adverts truly sucks ass. It didn't add anything of value either.
Microsoft is pushing out new versions because no one has gone for their subscriptions so new versions is how they make money. That is all.
> b0s0z0ku : Also, if you're not an idiot and don't go to random sites/click "run" on downloaded files, you're reasonably safe.
Wow. You really are an idiot. Precisely the sort of idiot who needs to be protected with security patches.
Re:Windows 7: The Best Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny. I always thought Win2k was the best version. The UI stayed out of your way, it was fast and super stable with no extra BS.
Re:Windows 7: The Best Windows (Score:5, Informative)
In its original incarnation, its memory footprint was about 35 megabytes and it was insanely fast compared to anything that came after.
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I'm pretty sure Microsoft has a deal with drive manufacturers to wear them out prematurely in order to boost sales. I see constant complaints from people about how slow their computers are and it's always some Windows process thrashing the hard drive.
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(Another AC)
If you look past the UI, which granted takes a bit more brainpower than most slashdotters can muster, Windows 8 is a far superior OS compared to 7. It's faster, scales better over more cores, it handles memory better, etc. AFAIK 8 marks the end of the era where anyone who actually knew what they were doing had any kind of influence at Microsoft.
In many ways Windows XP was the first clear sign of the cancerous influence by the incompetents and ignorants, where the UI got completely screwed up by
20 years behind as always. Linux in 1999 (Score:3, Insightful)
It's amazing to me how often Windows is 10-20 years behind Linux in such basic features. Here's a screenshot from Gnome 1.0 in 1999. The 2x2 panel at the bottom left is for switching between virtual desktops (workspaces). It was included in 1.0 because it was considered a basic feature in Linux by 1999.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
"Including any Pentium III" (Score:2)
Good thing there is Linux... (Score:5, Informative)
The last Pentium III chip ever created was released in 2001.
2001. That is 17 years ago. Last computer built with this ancient technology is probably from 2005, over ten years ago. Much of the hardware machinery, such as mechanical drives and fans, should've stopped working by now. If they miraculously still work, Linux is a prime candidate to run on this super-old system for that last mileage.
Face it, Windows 7 is on it's death bed, and if you do not like it, go Linux or go home. :)
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except for the problem that NEWER Intel CPUs are ALSO pulled out of support. My i7-7700 makes Windows Update tell me to upgrade to Win10 or GTFO. If it wasn't for WSUS Offline I'd be unable to keep my system updated.
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:5, Interesting)
You are forgetting about embedded systems. An MRI-machine, for example, has a lifetime of > 20 years.
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:5, Informative)
I regularly use diagnostic x-ray machines that run Windows XP - these are considered "current" models by the manufacturer. I've also seen in regular use an OPG machine running Windows 98.
The key is that these machines are carefully isolated from the internet and are only able to communicate with their designated PACS and RIS servers. The XP based machines do have the ability to communicate with the manufacturer, but only if we take it out of use and place it into remote access mode, which requires the infrastructure team to enable a VPN on their end.
Most interaction between manufacturer and machine involves an engineer connecting a flash drive to it and downloading the logs to interrogate on a company laptop.
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:4)
The bigger problem I've run across with clients still running XP (isolated from the Internet) is that Microsoft no longer allows you to update it over the Internet (aside from a registry hack to trick Microsoft into thinking it's an embedded system). So if you ever need to wipe and reinstall, you end up with an older version of XP and no way to update it automatically. You have to know to manually download the last service pack and install it yourself. And I'm not sure how to install any updates which were released after the last service pack.
This really makes me worry about how well supported Windows 8/10 will be after they're replaced. Those have no service packs - you can only update them via Windows Update. If Microsoft continues dropping update support after extended support for the OS ends, there's going to be no way to update them. Microsoft really needs to make available install media for these older obsoleted OSes available with all updates slipstreamed in. (I've had similar problems with Office 2003 and 2007 - Microsoft's website to download Office updates disappeared and now redirects you to buy a subscription to Office 365 [office.com]. As best as I can tell, the only way to get updates for Office 2003/2007 is now also through Windows Update. Or if you know to search for and download the service packs.)
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Sure. But that mistake is made in practice because it needs to be cheap (i.e. cheap coders and they can only do Windows) and a screw-up like this does not legally count as negligence or violation of best practices.
Re:Good thing there is Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux doesn't have good proprietary drivers and is useless at multimedia.
Linux has good open-source drivers, and is good at multimedia. When it comes to embedded, especially with something like an MRI machine, that's somewhat irrelevant since you'll be writing your own drivers anyway.
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Yes. They were so atrocious that they started the PVR revolution.
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a) The drivers would be provided from the people providing the hardware. Writing Linux drivers is not any harder than writing Windows drivers.
b) You don't run games on an MRI machine.
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The anti-Linux faction is stupid. They do not understand your argument. The drivers would come from the people designing the hardware anyways, so the problem is irrelevant. Multimedia-capabilities are irrelevant as well, as everything would be custom-build anyways. The whole thing is a straw man, because they actually do not have any arguments besides "Linux is not a good gaming OS".
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Words nobody has ever spoken: What OS does the MRI run? Windows 98. What?? We refuse to pay you multiple millions of dollars for that! Go look for a Linux version! *crickets*
Nobody makes a Linux MRI, because there are a bajillion support & certification requirements for software in something like an medical equipment. Which is why you can still find Win98 in brand new devices.
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Indeed. They should have uses a proper embedded OS, like a hardened and customized Linux, for example, or one of the other options. Windows is the least suitable option, and not only for its lack of long-term support.
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Embedded systems like MRI-machines that still run such old software should either not be networked (and thus not be updated so they're not affected by this move) or they should have been designed in a way that would easily allow upgrading any Pentium 3 to something not entirely ancient.
We've become so used to backwards compatibility that we expect it as default. But in reality it's totally ridiculous that 8088 software still runs natively on my CPU. Even car tires aren't that backwards compatible....
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"Should" does not help when the reality is different and already established.
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If you have an MRI machine or a power station or any other critical embedded system connected to the wide open internet without a VERY strong firewall in place, you are a stupid idiot and don't deserve to be allowed near a computer...
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Who expects to get operating system upgrades for even ten years after buying a product? If the product works, then fine, but don't expect that a company will release updates forever. End of Support is just that, where the company won't provide new updates. There comes a point where the product won't even run that goes beyond that End of Support point due to licensed components in the operating system going beyond the license date, and THAT is where people need to be concerned. What components in Win
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So you think that, for example, cars, planes, backhoes, factory machinery, etc. should all be thrown away after 10 years? But you are missing the point: Win7 has support until 2020. MS just cut that short for some relevant user group and without warning and _that_ is the problem.
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Much of the hardware machinery, such as mechanical drives and fans, should've stopped working by now.
That's unlikely.
Face it, Windows 7 is on it's death bed, and if you do not like it, go Linux or go home. :)
Good plan.
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The first AMD chip with SSE2 support was the Athlon 64 'Clawhammer', released in late 2003.
Why would you be running Windows 7 on a non-SSE PC (Score:2)
Re:Why would you be running Windows 7 on a non-SSE (Score:4, Informative)
Embedded systems like medical equipment, displays, measurement equipment, etc.
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Don't ask me, I most definitely would not do that. But these devices are out there and in use.
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The last PC I had that wasn't capable of SSE2 was an Athlon T-Bird, which had a quite beefy for its time 768MB of RAM. I wouldn't want to even try running Windows 7 on that.
I had a dual Athlon 1800MP for years with 2GB of RAM, it survived surprisingly long by being dual processor, and having the GPU upgraded 3 times. It mostly died 7 years ago because everything compiled with a microsoft compiler depended on SSE2, so practical support ended 7 years.
Quietly? More like deceptively! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, most people do not run Win7 on computers that old. But there are embedded systems like displays, measurement equipment, medical equipment, etc. that will be affected by this and MS was fine doing this deceptively and without warning and without giving people time do make arrangements. They also did it _while_ these systems are officially compliant with the Win7 minimum requirements. That is just completely unacceptable, but so very much like MS. No honor, no care for the customer, just always after the biggest profit they can get for cheap.
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But there are embedded systems like displays, measurement equipment, medical equipment, etc
Wait...these were connected to the public internet?
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Windows Updates....the number of updates for Windows 7 is already fairly low, so not getting additional updates won't really matter to most people at this point. If you keep your computers for over ten years and still expect to get top end service, you must be delusional.
Pentium 3? (Score:2)
Thin end of the wedge (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep saying - This is just the thin end of the wedge. Or in this case, now a slightly thicker part of the thin end of the wedge; It'll keep getting worse and worse until 'no support in 2020 but you can still use it on existing systems' slowly turns into 'deliberately crippled on all systems so you have to use windows 10'
Don't listen to all these astroturfers putting down old systems just because they're old.
If they could run Win7, there's no good reason why the goal posts should suddenly be moved.
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These systems were supplied either with Windows 9x or Windows XP.
People who would pay for an upgrade to the OS would also (after 15 years) have upgraded the hardware a long time ago.
ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the project has been around for two decades, but it's made remarkable strides in the last couple of years. Give it two more—coincidentally when all support for Win7 ceases—and I think people will be pleasantly surprised by its usability. My only concern is that the Kremlin has dumped a bunch of money into the project, and I'd feel better if someone did an independent security audit of the code to see that Vlad didn't have some backdoor put in.
Instructional illustrations (Score:2)
I'll just leave this [google.com] here.
There has to be limits (Score:2)
I really don't take an issue with this to be honest. They're supporting an old OS for a heck of a while, that hardware is incredibly incredibly old.
You can continue to use Windows 7, you just need slightly newer hardware. It's not that unreasonable.
I'm a pretty archaic nerd but hanging on to ridiculous old hardware has held us back. Look at 64bit support due to crappy Atom chips and netbooks. Windows Vista and 8, should never have had 64bit. But Windows 10, STILL shipping in 32bit? Cmon enough is eno
Ecology and 'upgrades' (Score:2)
Forget that little Billy is 'curing' malaria and thus helping his share portfolio etc., Microsoft is doing a lot of avoidable damage with this, basically to improve revenue and 'shareholder value'.
Now if only... (Score:2)
Now if only they'd cut off Windows 10 support for newer computers...
EOL is EOL... (Score:3, Informative)
Do a Google search for: Windows 7 EOL and you will get the following:
Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015, but extended support won't end until January 14, 2020. This applies as long as you have Service Pack 1 installed.
So, Windows 7 is already well beyond the end of the normal support cycle for consumers, and the extended support is going away in another 1.5 years. If people insist on holding on to what is soon to become a dead end, then you run into the problems you see with Windows XP, where getting it to run on a new computer is problematic and requires a virtual machine, because there are no drivers for the newer components. Want to put antivirus or other programs on there, nope, they won't run on anything older than Windows 7 currently.
The longer you hold on to an OLD product, the more difficult it will be to migrate your programs/data, and at some point, you just won't be able to get your old programs running on newer computers. Then, you end up needing to really hunt for parts to fix your old computer. If you are on a laptop, it becomes even more difficult to deal with a hardware failure due to a lack of standardization in the components in a laptop.
I understand that many people don't like some of the things in Windows 10, but the bulk of those things can be removed or turned off, and it is worth the effort to modernize NOW, before you end up stranded and without a way to move to a new computer when your old machine needs to be upgraded.
Re:EOL is EOL... (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as windows 10 is spyware, changing to it is not "upgrading" or "modernizing". It's acceptance of abuse. And your insistence that it is something else is assistance of abuse.
When I can no longer run windows 7 on my PC, I will move the installation into VMware and run Linux on my PC. I will never run any newer version of Windows. Microsoft is now nothing but a malware distributor, and anyone proposing you use Windows is aiding criminal activity.
Microsoft is SCHOCKINGLY self-destructive. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many, many people agree with what you said. Microsoft is shockingly self-destructive. A few of the many, many negative articles:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you [pcworld.com].
Microsoft again forced upgrades on Win10 machines specifically set to block updates [computerworld.com] (March 12, 2018)
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
...if you're not an idiot and don't go to random sites/click "run" on downloaded files, you're reasonably safe...
Excellent, using your idea, we don't need to patch anything ever again. The answer has been right in front of us all this time, we would have never figured it out if you hadn't come along. I won't even need to help older relatives when they fuck up their PCs, I'll just print out your post and stick it below their screen
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Well said. You responded far more politely than I would have to a person is a living, breathing example of the kind of fuckwit who for years helped to keep Linux from being widely accepted. Newbies would drop by a Linux site hoping for help. They would ask questions that were very elementary but not stupid, often after having invested hours trying to fix a problem themselves. Far too often the "advice" they got from twatwaffles like this was that they were morons who shouldn't be allowed to own a comput
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"And that most Pentium III systems are likely running in specific, non-Internet-connected applications." = You made that up from pure spun hubris. You're an idiot sometimes when you do this.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't change the fact that Windows 7 officially supports Pentium IIIs (32-bit x86 1GHz or higher) and has stated support to 2020. And that this inherently means if they're running in specific applications and are exploited because of malware because of a lack of updates, Microsoft can be sued through the ass not to mention be potentially brought up on fraud charges*. But, yea, let's try to spin this into being a minor issue and wholly the users fault.
PS - Even using your out of the ass numbers of 0.5% of computers (really using just Windows 7 sales (300 million), which is a smaller number), and you're talking 1.5 million computers. You don't think 1.5 million computers as part of a botnet would be a big thing? Or replacing 1.5 million computers early would be a big thing? Seriously, the sheer scale of expected support should have shut down Microsoft considering such changes.
Of course, the real lesson here is to cut Windows products out of your environment as much as possible. Any company that believes it can just mandate substantial changes to your business so you can keep accepting patches to fix ITS bugs is a trainwreck.
* Large corporations quite specifically are maximizing the life of bought hardware and scheduling software purchased based upon a support cycle. Anything that upsets that can be a massive loss.
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Even using your out of the ass numbers of 0.5% of computers (really using just Windows 7 sales (300 million), which is a smaller number), and you're talking 1.5 million computers. You don't think 1.5 million computers as part of a botnet would be a big thing? Or replacing 1.5 million computers early would be a big thing?
Most of those have already been replaced and sent off to the metal recyclers. Congratulations, you managed to offer even dumber numbers than the GP.
Of course, the real lesson here is to cut Windows products out of your environment as much as possible. Any company that believes it can just mandate substantial changes to your business so you can keep accepting patches to fix ITS bugs is a trainwreck.
"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.... [phoronix.com]
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"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
This is not comparable.
Linux dropped support for very obscure CPU architectures. Consumers are unlikely to possess these architectures at all. Corporate customers can still get the code from old Linux versions which are still available online under the GPL.
Microsoft is dropping support for extremely mainstream architectures which still have millions of users. And there's no alternative to download the code and recompile it in the future.
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"Linux Set To Shed Nearly 500k Lines Of Code By Dropping Old CPUs"
This is not comparable.
Linux dropped support for very obscure CPU architectures. Consumers are unlikely to possess these architectures at all.
When it was announced various users did complain. "Obscure" is not constant across platforms. With Linux being a re-use path for old PC hardware dropping a PIII would be a larger issue in Linux than in Windows. Windows boxes actively used still running on a PIII based system may be as rare as the platforms dropped by Linux. Things are a bit more comparable than you suggest.
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* Large corporations quite specifically are maximizing the life of bought hardware and scheduling software purchased based upon a support cycle. Anything that upsets that can be a massive loss.
Large corporations that are still demanding support for 20-year old systems are not relying on a reasonable support cycle. They're acting like a bunch of whiny cheap-asses who would be willing to spend FAR more money fighting fine-print support bullshit in court than they would simply upgrading their hardware.
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Why is it unreasonable to expect an OS to be supported until the date published by its developer a very long time ago?
Maybe those old systems are redundant or obsolete. Maybe they're not. I don't know, and neither do you, and neither does Microsoft.
Re:Things change (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it unreasonable to expect an OS to be supported until the date published by its developer a very long time ago?
It's not unreasonable but it might be ill advised.
And it makes for a real interesting conversation for what you will use for your next generation machinery controllers.
It's easy for us to rant on Slashdot about how stupid these companies who might be expecting say the PC controlling a huge forge to be supported for the length of time it was stated to be supported. Fr the PC jockey's view, 5 years is ancient.
But - and here's the kicker - when the manufacturer of that 100 million dollar forge is trying to make the sale - the buyer is going to ask about what operating system controls the forge. And if Microsoft OS - how will they know how long Microsoft will provide support will be asked. Finally - what happens if Microsoft drops support. Two years early? 5 years early?
The number of devices that are left hanging are small. But odds are they are big and expensive. And the takaways are two:
Microsoft has decided they don't have to offer support for as long as they say they do.
You cannot trust what they say.
This lack of veracity would have a rather large impact on purchasing decisions.
Promises (Score:4, Insightful)
And it makes for a real interesting conversation for what you will use for your next generation machinery controllers.
Yeah I'm kind of amazed how little consideration purchasers of this expensive equipment typically give to these sorts of important questions. I run a manufacturing company and I'm SUPER careful about investing in software or hardware that I think even has a chance of not being supported in future years. If something runs Windows that's potentially fine if I'm only expecting the equipment to have a service life of 3-5 years. Anything longer than that and there had better be a very specific service contract involved or it needs to run a system that doesn't depend on a third party for support. The presses and other heavy equipment we use in our company have software written by and for the company that sells the press and they can support it 100% for the expected life of the device. No third parties are involved and that's to our benefit.
Microsoft has decided they don't have to offer support for as long as they say they do.
Which is a risk you take whenever you depend on a third party who is not a signatory to the equipment purchase. You're basically making an assumption unless someone who actually works for Microsoft is in the room and signs a commitment obligating Microsoft for support.
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Expecting a machine that runs a specific version of Windows to still be running 20 years later is extremely foolish. If the company that sold you the machine doesn't have access to the source code for everything on that machine then you are playing with fire. Maybe you'll get lucky but only a fool depends on luck with big capital purchases.
We of course know that now. And this Microsoft issue is part of what illustrate it. And that is the problem. Did Microsoft tell them they were foolish? Probably not. Even without dishonesty, they'll be happy to make the sale. Remember all of the applications businesses were developing for their intranet that were developed for Internet Exploder 6? A lotta time, and a lotta money to update all of those apps. Foolish? Especially in the glare of 20/20 hindsight. I don't know what the present day situation is,
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
What other OSes have been supported since 2009?
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RHEL 5
SLES 11
Solaris 10
The shoocker for me was that I can't put any IBM OSes on the list (AIX, z/OS).
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
"Of course, the real lesson here is to cut Windows products out of your environment as much as possible."
What should they be replaced with that will be supported for 9 years?
Re: Who cares? (Score:3)
Any Linux distros supported for free for almost 9 years? Any of you dorks planning to answer the question or is it tantrum time again?
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
RHEL5 released in 2007 and is in extended support until 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
SLES11 came out in 2009, LTSS ends in 2022.
For fun, Solaris from 2005 is supported until 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So while OSX and community distributions and Ubuntu LTS don't go that far, there are OSes that do. This is one reason why people snicker at Ubuntu's proclamation of 'Long Term Support', when the competitors have so much longer support cycles.
Of course, I wouldn't wish a RHEL5/SLES11 desktop on anyone, they are missing so many features in the current distros. Then again, XP also was pretty pathetic desktop experience wise when it was still popular relative to contemporary Microsoft desktops.
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Doesn't change the fact that most malware is unknowingly installed by its users, involuntarily, likely because they are logged in with local admin rights that make it rather easy.
FTFY, because you know this. Yes, user error certainly does play a part, but these days it's rather easy to find a browser or plugin exploit, and that was before the browser market started growing and creating multiple vectors. Deception does not validate the use of the term "voluntarily", as no one would happily install malware if they knew what it was.
And that most Pentium III systems are likely running in specific, non-Internet-connected applications.
And probably haven't received patches in quite a long time anyway. A 20-year old PIII-powered system isn't running Windows 7, it's walking it.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're far from alone in that, my friend. A bunch of people I know got the same kind of treatment. I stayed with Apple and Microsoft for business reasons. I might finally start looking at Linux again soon. It won't be because I think the fanbois' manners have improved, but because I really don't like the "you don't own it, you only rent it" approach to software the big boys are taking.
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One, a lot can change in 20 years in a community.
Two, Windows support communities can similarly be terrible.
The interesting difference is that for Microsoft, you can't (legally) be using it without some recourse for professional support. For Linux, you can either pay and have support or use it and have to resolve in the community.
Of course, based on what I've seen in MS community boards and formal responses, if you hit something 'weird', the community in MS has a better shot at figuring out than the offici
Linux history (Score:3)
Linux came out between versions 3.0 and 3.1 of Windows.
Linux was nothing more than a hobby project for several years though a promising one. I was in college when it came out and for desktop use it wasn't even remotely competitive until after Windows 95 dropped. The only people to touch it were the most serious of unix geeks who loved it. (myself among them) The earliest distros were useful but weren't even close to ready for use by the general public.
Lots of PCs were coming with Windows at that point, but most software was still DOS (since Windows was an app rather than an OS) and very few file formats required non-DOS software.
Windows after version 3.0 was not an application. To call it one really misrepresents how it worked. It w
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with the way some of these OS patches have been going, I would like to just subscribe to network and driver stack patches somehow.
win 10 patches.. are they even patches? who the fuck knows. it seems they just do them to promote their apps and to reset settings from people so they could be tricked to using them.
as far as the support for win7, well, dunno. ask your money back I suppose, they're obviously lying about their pr in regards to it.
also win7, wtf are the patches for again? network stack? if you g
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also with Windows 10, Windows 10 is 'eternal', but your device running Windows 10 can at any point have it's support yanked, but "windows 10" is still supported, it's just that your device can no longer get updates....
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The day we post that Windows 10 won't get updates on certain devices because support is suddenly yanked, conflicted minds all over Slashdot will be blown.
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if a company just decides they don't want to honor the promises they made, they should be able to walk away whenever they want? That's incredibly moronic and you know it. Microsoft led customers to believe they would receive support through the EOL date. Prematurely ending support is going back on their word, and it shouldn't be legal for them to do this.
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Re: Who cares? (Score:3)
Bingo.
BTW, was this change in support reported by Microsoft, or just inferred from secret documents a third-party claims to have seen?
The patches offered for Windows 7 today are very infrequent, almost non-existant, and to be honest, unless your PIII computer is supporting a browser and is connected to the internet, Windows updates are likely irrelevant at this point - the vast majority of OS bugs were resolved long before this support rumour started.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not importance-wise. Likely applications that will be networked is medical imaging, display boards, some measurement equipment, SCADA system front-ends, etc. This is a real fail on their part and, if I were up to me, they would be liable for any and all damage they cause.
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Also, if you're not an idiot and don't go to random sites/click "run" on downloaded files, you're reasonably safe.
Code Red would like to have a word with you.
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it's not that it is older architecture that they're dumping support for, it's HOW THEY'RE DOING IT.
windows 7 has a published EOL. they aren't adhering to it.
they release buggy patches. they said they'd fix them. they are not.
__
similarly, and even more fucked up, microsoft killed support for windows 7 and 8.x for *NEW* processors (amd am4 bristol ridge/ryzen, intel kaby lake and newer).. and tried to nix it for skylake as well. also violating their own published lifecycle.
THIS IS NOT OK. regardless of the ag
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Sunk cost fallacy.
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Why stop there? (Score:2, Insightful)