Microsoft's New Browser For Windows 7 Will Be Retired In July 2021 (softpedia.com) 27
Microsoft's relatively new Chromium-based Edge browser is going to be retired in mid-2021. Softpedia reports: News of Microsoft supporting Edge on Windows 7 until at least July 2021 first surfaced earlier this year, but now the software giant has updated its official documentation with more specifics about this date. "We will continue to support Microsoft Edge on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 until July 15, 2021. These operating systems are out of support and Microsoft recommends you move to a supported operating system such as Windows 10," the company explains. "While Microsoft Edge helps keep you more secure on the web, your PC may still be vulnerable to security risks. In order for IE mode to be supported on these operating systems the devices will need to have the Extended Security Updates for Windows 7. Without the Windows 7 Extended Security updates Internet Explorer functionality will be vulnerable to security risks. Additionally, IE mode functionality may cease to work without the continued servicing through the extended security updates."
Re: (Score:2)
Why is this news? (Score:1)
What could be more trifling and why does anyone imagine it's worthy of linking? We already use our browsers of choice and that isn't one of them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Interesting)
People still use Windows 7 because it works. I had Windows 8.1 pro and liked it, and recently upgraded to Windows 10 pro. Major mistake, it's awful. It's noticeably slower than Windows 8 and 7. Even after getting rid of some useless background tasks that suck up all the cpu and disk i/o, it's still much slower to boot (with the fast boot option) and when you get to the main screen you may as well just sit back for a few minutes to let it settle down. It's even more dumbed down, with fewer customizations, and important tweaks hidden in the registry. More "apps" that you cannot uninstall. A default color scheme that's terrible (apparently this was a recent addition as my W10 VM at work looks much nicer).
Re: (Score:1)
I recently bought a new computer that has a GPU without Windows Vista/7/8 drivers so I'm forced to use the copy of Windows 10 that came preinstalled. It took me days to yank out all of the spyware, advertising, Cortana, Microsoft Office, OneDrive, Xbox, Microsoft Store, automatic updates, etc. by deleting tons of scheduled tasks, registry entries, services and files related to those things. The system works fine and all of my programs work, but I can't run the "settings" desktop mobile phone app because it
Re: Why is this news? (Score:2)
It took me days to yank out all of the spyware, advertising, Cortana, Microsoft Office, OneDrive, Xbox, Microsoft Store, automatic updates, etc.
It should not take you days to install Linux. Clearly you were doing something wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
It also shouldn’t take more than a few hours to install a clean version of Windows 10. It’s always the first thing I do when I get a new Windows Box, else you’ll never remove all the OEM pre-installs.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly other than downloading Windows updates, doing a fresh Windows 10 install is pretty painless these days. Yes, you have to take 5 minutes and uninstall Skype etc, and disable about a dozen services that nobody needs, but it is just tedious, not particularly hard or time consuming.
Safer from who? (Score:1, Troll)
I would guess that Windows 10 with updates might be safer from external exploits, but if you include "secure from Microsoft", I bet Windows 7 will be a better bet overall for a long time to come.
Re: (Score:3)
I would guess that Windows 10 with updates might be safer from external exploits, but if you include "secure from Microsoft", I bet Windows 7 will be a better bet overall for a long time to come.
Microsoft backported a good deal of telemetry to Windows 7 back in the day, so, you are not secure from microsoft under win7 htna you are on win10.
Look for Vista instead. /. , Wine
Or, you know, since we are on
Do people actually use Edge? (Score:2)
With Chrome, Brave and Firefox, why use Edge?
And maybe MS should get out of the browser business all together if the cost-benefit numbers don't make sense.
Re:Do people actually use Edge? (Score:4, Interesting)
With Chrome, Brave and Firefox, why use Edge?
In a word: Corporates.
An "Open on IE" function actualy sanctioned and supporte by MS is a godsend in certain verticals. Is not that FF, or Chrome don't have an "Open on IE" function. But rather, is the fact that the owner of Windows and edge actually supports the function.
If you work with azure, Edge is convenient. Is not that Azure does not work on chrome or FF, but rather, Edge will got out of its way to make your life easier on azure (and viceversa).
The way BIG-COs work, is only a matter of time before Edge (along with Firefox ESR) becomes the defacto browser for corporate apps from SAP to Oracle, and IPMI tools from all the major HW vendors.
After all, vendors like Oracle, SAP, Dell, HPE, Software AG, Microfocus, Huawei, Lenovo, and all the others do not like to certify tons of browsers, nor they want to certify browsers that change each month (desktop firefox) or two (chrome) months, or browsers without a known update schedule (safari), or non-cross-platform desktop browsers (again safari).
With public cloud VDI, guess which will be the preconfigured browser on those really cheap sweet desktops on Azure.
Those are a few of the reasons why some corporates may end up using Edge, and why microsoft keeps pushing with that effort.
Re: (Score:1)
vendor lock out (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
If governments can use 60 year old COBOL mainframes, then we should be able to use a 25 year old Microsoft products. I kind of wish software copyrights didn't last for eons, then some industrious souls [majorgeeks.com] could take over the support for decrepit software. That said, I don't imagine a lot of Slashdotters are running out to get a support license for a OS/2 [arcanoae.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Complete nonsense. People don't want to upgrade because their option is a steaming pile of shit that is Windows 10.
Why does it exist in the first place? (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I'm shocked that they released a Win7-compatible version of Edgium to begin with, especially given that Edgium went "gold" on January 15, exactly 1 day *after* Windows 7 reached official EOL (at least for consumers)! If anything, that release potentially breathed some more life (even if just a smidge) into Win7.
Was it because they wanted to release a supported browser for those enterprises paying for Win7 extended support? That's about the only theory I can manage to make sense...
I'm also tempted to ask why did they bother if they're "only" going to support Win7 Edgium for 1.5 years, but now that I think about it, that's a relatively long time...
Re: (Score:3)
Was it because they wanted to release a supported browser for those enterprises paying for Win7 extended support? That's about the only theory I can manage to make sense...
Yes. You can't have a paying customer and offer support for only part of your shipped products. This is all about lowering maintenance costs.
Re: (Score:2)
IE11 is still in Windows 10, and I can't imagine it's too much trouble to backport those patches to Windows 7 if Microsoft wanted to. Maybe IE11 in Windows 7 is not longer supported (I'll guess that it is, if you're paying for it), but in any case Microsoft is going to be supporting IE11 for a very long time to come.
I still say releasing Edge for Windows 7 the day after Windows 7 went out of support is truly one of the most bizarre things I've seen Microsoft do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Now that they're using a browser derived from Chromium compatibility with earlier Windows is easier.
IE Default Browser (Score:1)
I am a Federal Government employee. The admins set Internet Explorer as the default browser on all of our machines.