Final Notice

All good things must come to end. With that said, Windows 7 will no longer receive security updates, even if substantial security holes are found in them on January 14, 2020. What this means for you is that starting this month, you will be getting nag screens on windows 7 about upgrading to Windows 10, and it is not free, either.

 For users of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise, you can purchase Extended Security Updates through January 2023, Extended Security Updates (ESU) will once again be charged and will double for each successive year that they’re required. There are also specific penalties for companies that choose Windows 7 Pro over Windows 7 Enterprise, as the company tries to push all corporate users on to its top tier offering.

In year one, Windows Enterprise support will be $25 per machine – no small potatoes when your firm has thousands of machines. Windows 7 Pro users have it worse, at $50 per machine.

These prices double in year two ($50/$100) and again in year three ($100/$200). There will be no year four, though we suspect that Microsoft will change its mind if a multi-national decides to throw stupid money at it.

All these prices also include ESU for Office 365 Pro Plus and may be subject to bulk discounts, although I suspect any ongoing relationship like that would involve Redmond leaning heavily on the client to get over themselves and upgrade to the ‘greatest version of Windows’ (sigh).

If a company decided in year two that it wanted to opt in, after going commando for a year, they would have to pay the accumulative price for the two years, again, per machine. For the record and as you’d expect, Microsoft won’t be offering extensions for Home users (Home Premium 64bit).

Microsoft has declined to elaborate on these reports, instead advising firms to deal directly with their Microsoft rep, but with documentation showing the price list already in the public domain, it seems that this is the figure we’re looking at. Microsoft will do everything they can to retain their customers, but we could also see firms deciding to take the jump to Chrome OS, Linux or macOS, and we’ll expect some aggressive bulk pricing from all three this year.

Windows 7 EOL (end of life) is in 6 months, and I have 3 clients that use dual boot machines, Windows 10 and Ubuntu, but even those clients only use Linux very little, I do not expect a massive push towards Linux or Mac, because the learning curve is very hard. Even current customers that have upgraded now from 7 to 10 still need several hours of counseling to master the switch. Unlike XP, the best ever version of windows was 7, now that is on the way out, and what is replacing it is going to be a headache for all of us to burden. Windows 7 was released to the public, October 22^nd 2009, an 11 year run; XP had a 14 year run, question is now what direction will you run? Thanks for reading, and remember at “Hunt Technology”, you always get “Quality Service & Individual Attention” you deserve.  Hunt Technology, 320 Watson St., Ripon WI, 920-290-0936