Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Windows Microsoft

A Year After Microsoft Ended All Support for Windows 7, Millions of Users Are Still Not Upgrading (zdnet.com) 239

Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet: With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet. A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in the past year. On the eve of Microsoft's Windows 7 end-of-support milestone, I consulted some analytics experts and calculated that the owners of roughly 200 million PCs worldwide would ignore that deadline and continue running their preferred OS. That was, admittedly, a rough estimate. During the holiday lull at the end of 2020, I decided to go back and run the latest version of those analytics reports. They tell a consistent story.

Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question. At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x. A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

A Year After Microsoft Ended All Support for Windows 7, Millions of Users Are Still Not Upgrading

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:43AM (#60879100)

    Let Win10 Pro users deactivate - not merely nerf to "minimal" - telemetry, just like Enterprise.
    Let Win10 Pro users choose when to install updates - not merely declaring certain hours as active hours - just like Enterprise.
    Or, if Win10 Pro is the new Win7 Home - sell a single-user license of Win10 Enterprise at a $50-100 premium in the same way that Win7 Ultimate Edition was sold.

    The first item in the chumbox of related articles is "Microsoft: This new Windows 10 preview is just to test how quickly we can issue builds" -- and is yet another reason why people who remain on Win7 are continuing to do so. Microsoft may get value out of rapidly issuing builds. The person behind the keyboard of a computer running Windows does not.

    • Also, please drop the Home Editions. If you want to make Office and some other tools separate and charge for them, fine; but don't make us worry about not being able to install. One version should be all the same OS.

      None of this is going to happen though. Ever since Nadella took over their stock has taken off. Throwing the old customers under the bus turns out to be profitable.

    • sell a single-user license of Win10 Enterprise at a $50-100 premium in the same way that Win7 Ultimate Edition was sold.

      $84...per year. $7/mo. is what they require.

  • Considering that you can still using your old Windows 7 license, it warms my heart to know that enough people pushed back against invasive Windows 10 tracking to create this fiasco for Microsoft. They basically cannot give away Win 10 for free even after numerous concessions to introduce many privacy controls that allow you to disable problematic reporting.
    • I'm not pro-tracking, but if I recall -- didn't many or all of those "features" get backported to Windows 7?

    • I'm kind of surprised that they still charge for Windows 10 licenses. The OS really seems to have evolved into a ad platform for selling Office 365 subscriptions and OneDrive cloud storage expansions.

    • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      Windows 10 is on > 70% of all Windows-only machines. "They basically cannot give away Win 10 for free" is based on delusion and nothing else.

  • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:48AM (#60879116)

    You make a product that does what people want, people stick with it. No reason to update if it's already working fine and meeting all their needs. Can't depend on people just buying new PCs any more, too - they don't go obsolete as fast as they used to. I can see why Microsoft moved to rolling release on Windows 10, and made it impossible to prevent auto-updating on the home edition.

    Just as bad as the windows 7 PCs people actually use though, what about all the ones stuck in cupboards and server rooms doing essential but unloved things? My workplace still has a Windows 7 PC sat in a corner, holding the software that manages the door security locks and card readers. How many windows 7 PCs are still running lifts, HVAC systems, CCTV, signage, and a million other things?

    • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @12:18PM (#60879216)
      We still have an HVAC system controlled by a Windows 95 machine. (I think its still there, I don't work in that building any more) It is only used to change the system configuration, but it has worked for ages and has never needed replaced. It is not network connected, so it isn't a security issue, and is locked in the HVAC room.
      • We still actively use XP because a lot of our hardware doesn't have drivers for Windows 7, never mind Windows 10. This also ties us to older versions of .NET, and not being able to use much of the .NET and .NET Core NuGet ecosystem, because quite a bit of it requires at least somewhat modern versions of the .NET Framework (if not .Core).

        The software would happily run on Windows 10, but nothing newer than XP supports the hardware itself.

        If it were up to me the software would be Web-based, and require only a

        • What would you do if and when the computer dies? Find alternative hardware entirely?

          • The answer I'd like: release an upgraded version of the product that would work on both older and modern hardware. The answer I'm stuck with: for political reasons, not technical ones, they won't do that. They'll replace it with other old hardware.
    • You make a product that does what people want, people stick with it. No reason to update if it's already working fine and meeting all their needs.

      They do. You can see the overwhelming majority of users are on Windows 10. Now you may handwave that away with some contempt but the reality is Windows 10 actually does what people want, and there is a need to upgrade as needs change.

      If you ask many users their singular "need" is for nothing to change, regardless of whether it brings improvements or not because change = bad. You will always find people to reject every change, and you'll always find people like you claiming that something that is widely use

      • Change itsself comes with a cost. Even if the destination is a better product, just getting there requires expense and effort. Training. Testing. The inconvenience of learning where all the options are all over again. People are asking 'what does windows 10 do that windows 7 doesn't' and the answer is 'not a lot, really.'

        The overwhelming majority of users are on windows 10, yes. In the business world, that was an intentional upgrade. In the home, I imagine a lot of that was just people buying new computers

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I think we forget how much of security is simply based on best-use practices and not magic software that will defend you from your own stupidity.

      Even if an XP machine is on the internet, a good firewall, adblocker and responsible browsing practices will go a long way to preventing issues.

      • People also clearly forget that the most egregious viruses to hit were wormable 0days and needed close to nothing to infect your machine and worm through the entire network.
      • Go ahead and stick an XP box on the Internet. Please let us know long it takes before it's owned nine ways to Sunday. I'm betting it won't last a day.
    • Have you considered just virtualizing them? If your Win10 is Pro, you can use Hyper-V. If not, there's always VBox or VMWare Player (if that's indeed still free--haven't checked in a long time).
    • Win 7 also had Windows Media Center, which actually made the best HD DVR I've ever used. ReplayTV 4000 and 5000 series DVR's were better (auto commercial skip), but they're SD-only. WMC did everything else, and it could play DVD's. Or downloaded movies. Amazing product. Great stability, good UI. You could easily transport a Windows 3.0 user into the future and give them Win 7 and they'd figure it out in a few seconds with one piece of advice ("hey, click that button in the bottom left"). 10? Oh, well, some
    • Some apps I simply can't reinstall, and a few won't work under Windows 10.

      On the other hand, I have Lotus Word Pro and 123 from SmartSuite 9.8 (2002) installed on my Windows 10 Pro system (as well as Office 2010) and, with the exception of the online Help docs, they both run perfectly, so some props to Microsoft and/or Lotus that the apps can still be run.

  • by mikeebbbd ( 3690969 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:56AM (#60879138)

    There's the dominant variety (Win10), the one being replaced (whether you like it or not - and btw Win7 had telemetry too though not as pervasive), the variants that are going extinct (Win8), and the scattered remaining individuals that remain in various refugia (XP and older). I'm surprised that *any* visitors to govt web sites are still on XP; nobody using that should still be connecting to the Internet.

  • by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:58AM (#60879142) Journal

    I don't understand why Microsoft allowed free upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 only for a limited time. Now that Windows 7 is EOL they should make the upgrade free again. My grandfather has a Windows 7 machine that he was unable to upgrade, because his DSL was less than 1 Mbit at the time. I should have hauled the PC to my residence and upgraded it there, but missed that opportunity. Now he has faster internet and can upgrade, but you have to pay. As a casual home user that's not worth cost on that older PC. MS should make this free to avoid the security issues down the road.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by OffTheLip ( 636691 )
      Might not be true now but I upgraded my Win7 box to Win10 early this year and the Win7 license transferred to a digital license. Definitely outside of the "free" upgrade offer window.
    • by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Think about it for a moment. So you'd upgraded his machine, and the next time Win10 wanted to download its updates (at around 4 GB or so?) he'd be looking at a full day of things timing out when he just wants to go online and read the news.

      • Now he has faster internet

        Reading. Try it!

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          I was referring to if you'd taken his machine home to your faster connection and updated it to Win10 that way, then gave him the machine back while he still had the slow connection. Context. Try it!

    • You can still upgrade for free. Use the media creation tool to create a USB stick somewhere with fast Internet and take it over to that computer. Run the upgrade. Done.

    • Why do you want him to upgrade? Do you think the machine is not secure enough that it will get pwned?

      I would say get a good firewall, and an adblocker and tell him to stick with the well known pron sites and he should be fine until the PC dies. My 85+ year old dad keeps talking about buying a new PC, and I keep discouraging him because the windows10 changes are enough to confuse him and it will certainly be a less satisfying situation. So far the programs most older users need run just fine on windows7.

      I

    • by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

      While you don't have free upgrades you can use the Windows 7 key to install a new version of win 10.

  • by Hydrian ( 183536 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:59AM (#60879146) Homepage
    You want normal people to adopt the new OS faster? STOP CHANGING THE GUI! This is the main stumbling block for every new major version of Windows. It is the relearning of the user interface. This is a waste of time and money for both consumers and businesses.

    Most consumers don't care about backend changes. And unless they are a hardcore gamer, they don't care about DirectX/Vulcan support either. As long as their X,Y, and Z programs still run, that's all you need.

    The limited GUI changes in Mate version changes is one of the reason's I love Linux Mint Mate, I can upgrade and get VERY little GUI changes between each version.

    I don't have to spend time and energy to relearn things I readily knew to do before. This goes for every user out there.
    • by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @12:34PM (#60879300)

      I guess the people behind the Windows 95 GUI should have listened to you then and remained with the Windows 3.x GUI...

      I've gone through every iteration of Windows GUIs from 1.x to Windows 10. I usually get used to the new GUI in a matter of hours.

      • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @01:04PM (#60879452) Journal

        With particular respect to the start menu and task bar, 95 was a significant improvement and have stood the test of time.

        With Win8 they apparently decided that all computing devices are tablets with touchscreens, so instead of a nice list of text labels you could easily skim down to find what you want, you now have an entire screenful (or several screenfuls) of colored blocks and images, of different sizes, some distractingly animated, that you need to hunt through to find what you want.

        That was such a disaster that Win10 almost goes back to the start menu format, but instead of cascaded menus that are neatly organized you get one gigantic list. And don't forget the boarderless UI elements that expand if you mouse over them, blocking what you may have been wanting to click on and causing you to click the wrong thing just because your cursor wandered one pixel beyond a hotspot you didn't even know was there because who actually needs to know where UI elements begin and end, really? Just waggle your cursor in the general vicinity and you'll get what you want eventually!
        =Smidge=

      • You're a techy. Most users are not.
        Any techy with enough experience will give no fucks and use any GUI, but most Windows users are not old geeks with decades of experience. They don't "live" computing, they use computers.

    • What the hell man, seriously? Is this a joke? The GUI hasn't changed enough to complain about "learning curve" since maybe Windows 95 .. and even that's debatable. Do you seriously have to check a reference manual every time you want to launch a program? You don't know about the "click the icon" trick?

  • Windows 7 had just one service pack. Windows 10 has had almost 10 plus three ltscs. More fragmentation than a 10 year old 5400rpm hard drive.

    The people still using Windows XP and Vista should be forced off the internet for their own good though, as the update servers are dead.
  • Fuck all of you I'm running DR DOS 5.0. I browse the web in text mode. Deal with it.

    • Real men send queries to the web by wrapping two bared wires from an ethernet cable around their big toes and precisely dancing out bits of data on an aluminum plate. Incoming data is provided by two other wires which are attached to their nipples and decoded from the sensation. Somebody who's really good, can deal with their email while participating in a Zoom call while suppressing any thought of an erection.

      I don't know why I wrote that, other than to say I hate it when a story coming out about a techn

  • I was well on my way on moving away from Microsoft but I did like Windows 7 for legacy applications that I've used for years. I used to run it on a nice i-5 system that now runs Mint.

    All code & hardware development is on Linux (Ubuntu) and normal PC operations went to Macs (Apple's probably not better than Microsoft but OSX seems to be much more solid and nicer to work on). Business functions on Libre Office. Cloud storage is Github and Dropbox.

    Couldn't be happier.

    • by Jahta ( 1141213 )

      I was well on my way on moving away from Microsoft but I did like Windows 7 for legacy applications that I've used for years. I used to run it on a nice i-5 system that now runs Mint.

      Same here; just MX Linux in my case. I'd been dabbling for some time, but Windows 7 going end-of-life (and reading all the war stories about Windows 10) was the final push I needed to switch permanently. I haven't looked back.

      I suspect there a quite a few people who have upgraded Windows 7 by moving to Linux or a Mac.

  • If no one else is using it, I'll be hip and switch to Windows 8.1
  • Whatever shall we do? These ruffians cannot be allowed to use something they purchased and which still works perfectly well. It's a disgrace these people are being allowed to get away with not being maliciously tracked with every click of the mouse and not having ads shoved in their faces.

    Imagine, these people are using an OS on which they can do things without being interfered with. No pop ups, no warnings, no suggestions, no third party snooping. These poor unenlightened souls must learn of these peac

    • Iknowrite? I'm holding my head in my hands and alternating between shaking uncontrollably, screaming, and balling my eyes out over the utter unfairness of all of it. Poor, poor Microsoft might not figure out how to disable, adulterate, steal, or invalidate all the applications and data I have on my one swappable Windows 7 hard disk (because most of the time that system runs BSD until I want to play games) and I *might* continue to just keep my middle finger raised high using the stolen (thank you removewat.
  • ... when you invoke a major change to an OS from one version to the next.

    That change would be windows 7 to windows 8.
    Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but the damage was done - and the stats don't lie. Windows 8 is used less than Windows 7.

    Instead of slow and steady incremental updates, Microsoft hit users with an absolute whammy of a change - trying to bake in touch devices, despite the fact that for most people, this wasn't needed.

    Windows 10 reigned back in on this - but the change from 7 to 10 is not easy.
    Then

    • I use macOS as my primary creative & web development OS, Linux for all my server needs and as a secondary desktop - and as a TV box. Hmm, also on my mobile device. Windows 10 still powers my infrequently used gaming rig.
      Agnostic, as always.

  • Frankly, Microsoft fucked up. Between all the well-earned bad press about Windows 10, and being subjected to it where I was working at the time (out at Intel, where they literally bricked my computer remotely to force me to schedule the 'upgrade', the bastards), when I finally got newer hardware (was running an old AMD Athlon 64 single-core with a whole 2GB of RAM) there was no way in hell I was subjecting myself to Windows 10. Windows 8 and 8.1 were a Vista-level dumpster fire so those were no-go, too. The
  • Damn anti-vaxxers putting the rest of us at risk.

  • by Twinbee ( 767046 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @01:02PM (#60879440)
    I'm not sure whether Win 10 started it, or just went along with the herd, but I hate this latest trend for GUI designers to make everything tiny and thin with tons of whitespace, where everything is a single shade of white and there are no borders for discriminating elements. It's not cool, it's not funny, it's not useful, it's not functional, it's not even pretty. It's just Microsoft being arrogant cargo cultists and implementing change for the sake of change without any insight or forethought.

    Other than that, Win 10 is sluggish in day to day use (e.g: opening windows or programs) and the wrapper on top of a wrapper overlaid on a sorry excuse for a disorganized GUI mess gets old.

    I'm using Win 10. I tried to like it. My next version will be back to 7.
    • Yeah, that trend is horrible. I think it started with smartphone UIs where, at least, having big targets and a somewhat lower density of information makes sense. Microsoft made their verision of that in Windows Phone then tried to push that onto desktop Windows (8 and 10).
  • For most people, it isn't because they hate Windows 10, or even because they prefer Windows 7. It is just because they don't have to upgrade, so they won't.

    Granted today upgrading your OS isn't nearly such a big deal as it was 20 or even 10 years ago. However sense Windows XP the Home user, has been having Windows with the NT Kernel, which is far more stable and and secure than the DOS based Windows of the olden times. So Windows 7 Users are not suffering with using an Old OS, like you might have been sa

  • 1) Windows 7 is a pretty decent OS ( still ). Easy-ish to use, does everything needed. Yes, it doesn't get security updates, but for most folks that's a obscure risk ( until it isn't ).

    2) Windows 10 is a hot mess. 7 is still far easier to use and administrate. How many control panels do you really need? I guess it's good to have redundancy as half of them don't actually work right. Windows update fails more often than not.

    I wouldn't have upgraded either if I didn't need to for my job. A recurring the

  • but there are no descent retail POS solutions that run on Linux that don't require to be "In the cloud" for some reason or their design is stuck in the 80's If I could find some POS software that is around $1000 to buy and say $400/per for upgrade/support and I'd dump the last windows box today.

    • Why the hate for "1980s design", I've never been to a store or restaurant where I gave a ripping shit what their cash register looked like. If it gets the shit done...

  • When I eventually transition, it will be from Windows to Linux or Mac, or maybe both. I will never allow Windows 10 on any machine I own. In fact, I nuked it on a laptop I bought and replaced it with Windows 8.1.

    So my current situation is two Win 7 PCs, an 8.1 laptop and an ancient Lenovo Thinkstation running XP to accommodate old, reliable peripherals I will not replace until they physically break. All have internet access except the XP box.

    I employ good internet hygiene and back up regularly, and so fa

  • I don't care about whether its running XP or not, but old computer hardware is annoying to me. I don't like slow.

    • You don't need old hardware for your use case. Some do, to make money. For example a CNC mill running DOS etc isn't worth spending thousands to upgrade because it works perfectly well as it is and the software is faster than the hardware. Upgrading for the sake of change means thousands of dollars in downtime.
      Familiar applications like the old edition of GibbsCAM my machinistbro uses are ample for his purpose so no reason exists to learn different software and be less productive during the learning curve. I

  • Synopsys is planning a 2021 release which will support Windows 7. [synopsys.com]

    Synopsys is also planning for a release in 2021 which will support CentOS 6, which went EOL in November 2020.

  • You are reading this post in text, an established standard human interface.
    UI designers don't care about users, they care about their careers and regard "change" as "progress". Every dog wants to piss on the same tree to mark its spot.
    Computer users invest thousands of hours becoming maximally productive then a Windows (or Linux) change shits on that because some unaccountable thought it was cool and nothing more or different than that.
    Linux users always have the command line (and expect Linux DEs to be unf

  • My favorite non-feature of 10, is admittedly not suffered by many people:

    If you use an alternative shell that replaces explorer.exe than you can't use the fancy new Settings dialog, instead you get this helpful error msg:
    explorer.exe
            File system error (-2018374635).

    Thanks microsoft.

  • Ed Bott is well aware of Microsoft selling ongoing support for Windows 7 for another two years. He also knows that 0patch.com offers ongoing micropatch support that does not break Microsoft license issues. 0patch works great and keeps 7 running well. ZDnet is known to shlll for MS. So, there's that.
  • VCDS, [ross-tech.com] the diagnostic software for my car. It's what keeps my laptop dual-boot. Without that I'd be Linux-only. I'm running it on a laptop that came with Win7 out of the box and I kinda regret "upgrading".
  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @06:17PM (#60880436) Journal

    Win 7 was the best OS Microsoft ever made.

    I'd still be using it if I hadn't switched to Linux almost exactly 2 years ago.

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Working...