The death of Windows 7: 38% of Windows customers still use it

[ozarkman417]

Today is the final day of "extended support" of the Windows 7 operating system. Like other Windows OSs like XP (2014) and the much hated Vista (2017) which 7 was heavily based off, Microsoft will no longer be making updates to the OS (unless absolutely necessary). My oldest PC that will still run wouldn't work on Windows 8.1, and after reading the many horror stories of Windows 10 upgrades I wasn't even going to try that. I had to revert to Windows 7, and the OEM product key would not work, so I settled for LinuxMint.
By "customers", I mean personal (home users). Business use is a bit higher than that.

https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/09/majority-of-users-are-still-on-windows.html

[kphoger]

One of the MSOs that my company works for recommends using Windows 7 and requires using Internet Explorer.  Big business is slow to change...

[In_Correct]

Today is the final day of "extended support" of the Windows 7 operating system. Like other Windows OSs like XP (2014) and the much hated Vista (2017) which 7 was heavily based off, Microsoft will no longer be making updates to the OS (unless absolutely necessary). My oldest PC that will still run wouldn't work on Windows 8.1, and after reading the many horror stories of Windows 10 upgrades I wasn't even going to try that. I had to revert to Windows 7, and the OEM product key would not work, so I settled for LinuxMint.
By "customers", I mean personal (home users). Business use is a bit higher than that.

https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/09/majority-of-users-are-still-on-windows.html

Windows 2000 is a much improved operating system. Windows XP added a bunch of junk to it. No thank you, Rover The Search Dog. Also, while Windows XP lasted many years, I do not like it any more. Its file management is very much obsolete. I do not want to "Overwrite Existing File". With Windows 8 (and I think also Windows 7) it will automatically merge an incoming folder that has the same name as an existing folder. Files and folders are not overwritten.

Windows 8 and Windows .1 seem to be much better than Windows 7.

Of course I all ways try to make the Operating System look as old as possible. And I set it to Adjust For Best Performance (except for one setting. I leave the Show Thumbnails Instead Of Icons setting on.) and I have High Contrast turned on also.

I wait until I am forced to upgrade to a new operating system. With Windows XP, it was when I had enough of the "Overwrite Existing File".

The poll I Selected 8 / 8.1 ...

I am not a fan of Linux any more than Windows. I refuse to have any modern Day MacOS. I only have clam shell computers with Ancient Mac OS.

My favourite Operating System is RISC OS, with AROS and MorphOS also considered.

The reasons why I do not take AROS and MorphOS too seriously is be cause with AROS too many distributions of AROS are Linux based. And MorphOS does not have basic functions such as Stand By Mode.

As for Internet Browsers: I do not like Internet Explorer. I have not liked it for many decades. Recently I have out grown Chrome and Fire Fox. I use numerous alternate versions of these Web Kit, Chromium, Blink, and Gecko Browsers. I still hate them also.

[vdeane]

Linux Mint at home (though I do have one Windows 7 machine hanging on which I rarely use; I'll probably keep it for a little while, just never connecting it online after it gets the final free updates).  Just got upgraded to Windows 10 at work yesterday.  I like the new snipping tool (perhaps the one thing about Windows that I miss in Linux; the "take screenshot" accessory is not as elegant or powerful), calculator, and the fact that I can have the taskbar show only active windows from the current monitor.  I don't like the changes to how desktop slideshows work, the fact that IT seems to have disabled the ability to pin items to the start menu, or the inability to pin the printer settings which was in the Windows 7 start menu (the printer closest to me will revert to single sided greyscale periodically, forcing me to go into the printer settings and change it to double-sided color each and every time I want to print something), or the fact that Windows Defender is pushing OneDrive.  Thankfully the update annoyances that plague home computers (and Microsoft's spyware) are IT's problem, not mine.

[MikeTheActuary]

Windows 10 + Ubuntu under WSL here.

Windows 7 was a good OS, but I made the mistake of upgrading to Windows 8 on my machines...so I was happy when Win10 started to roll out.

I like Win10...now.  It's main issue was that Microsoft fails to adequately listen to the "insiders" beta-testing updates (although the failure is likely an ability to adequately find good feedback buried amongst all the crap information they receive), and let some buggy updates through...and Microsoft was initially too heavy-handed in pressuring users to accept updates.   They seem to have gotten better (but there's still room for improvement).

[bing101]

Tails OS, Knoppix OS and Ubuntu are on my personal computer but my work computer uses Chrome OS. I used to have Windows but I left after two decades though.

[J N Winkler]

My main PC still uses Windows 7 and I have no plans to upgrade to a newer version that is still in support.  I will take Windows 10 on a new PC when I eventually get around to buying one, but I have no plans to do so in the immediately foreseeable future because I have not yet identified anything I want to do that I cannot do on my current PC.  I have had more problems with updates going bad than I have had with virus infestations and data loss episodes, so I don't view the end of support as creating a need to upgrade or even to keep the computer off the public Internet.  For that matter, I still have a now-14-year-old laptop with Windows XP that can still connect to the Internet (though in practice I use it only to run a four-in-one multifunction printer that I use exclusively as a document scanner).

[Beltway]

Not dead, I have two 2012 laptops that are on Windows 7 and they have not "gone dead!"

That said, my home machine is a year and a half old desktop that has Windows 10.

I got all the final updates that I could for the laptops today, and I will finish getting my new laptop that is a week old, ready for mobile usage.

Other than a mobile backup, I won't see much use for the old laptops.

[KeithE4Phx]

Tails OS, Knoppix OS and Ubuntu are on my personal computer but my work computer uses Chrome OS. I used to have Windows but I left after two decades though.

I haven't had any use for Windows since I retired almost 5 years ago.  Every time I bought a PC since then, it came with Windows 10 Pro.  I replaced the hard drive, put the original one aside just in case I needed warranty work (never have, so far), and put a new drive with Linux Mint into each of them.

It's been Mint as my main OS for the last 10 years or so, when Ubuntu as a company got too full of itself, but I've also been using Slackware on lower-powered machines for the last 20 years.  Even on my Mac, I use Mint in VirtualBox (I hate that Mac user interface with a passion!)

[ET21]

My work computer still uses Windows 7 though I've been told I'm due for an upgrade.

Personal laptop is 10.

[Chris]

Enterprise users can still get custom support for Windows 7, but it's costly.

I think the reason why Windows 7 is still so widespread in use is the adoption of mobile devices as the primary device for consumers. A large share of people are just passive content consumers and not power users or creators that requires a laptop or even desktop environment. So they rarely use their computer and don't find the need to upgrade 'because it still works for what I need to do with it'. And businesses are always slow to upgrade.

I remember when we migrated from XP to Windows 7 at work, it wasn't even that long ago, I believe in 2015 or 2016. They paid a pretty penny for custom support. I worked in a large organization at the time with over 100 custom applications, some of them from the 1980s. Most only worked with Internet Explorer.

A problem I heard of at that time was that there were too many project managers with limited or no IT knowledge. Too many layers of management which prevents efficient adoption of new technologies. The migration was a 3 or 4 year process.

[roadman]

I still have Windows 7 on my home desktop, although my personal laptop and work computer have Windows 10.  Planning on upgrade my home desktop to Windows 10 at some point, now that Windows Media Player in 7 no longer populates album and track names when I rip CDs onto my computer.  I use my car's voice recognition feature to control the mp3 player I keep in it, so having track and album names is critical.  And I'd prefer not to have to spend the time manually inserting all this information once I rip a CD.

[kphoger]

My main PC still uses Windows 7 and I have no plans to upgrade to a newer version that is still in support.  I will take Windows 10 on a new PC when I eventually get around to buying one, but I have no plans to do so in the immediately foreseeable future because I have not yet identified anything I want to do that I cannot do on my current PC.  I have had more problems with updates going bad than I have had with virus infestations and data loss episodes, so I don't view the end of support as creating a need to upgrade or even to keep the computer off the public Internet.  For that matter, I still have a now-14-year-old laptop with Windows XP that can still connect to the Internet (though in practice I use it only to run a four-in-one multifunction printer that I use exclusively as a document scanner).

Not having any more security updates could be considered a bad thing, or it could be considered a good thing.

[hbelkins]

After Christmas, I got a new work PC that has Windows 10 and Outlook 2016 on it. It's been a pain to try to get everything looking like it did under my old Windows 7 machine with Outlook 2013. I still can't get the fonts and appearance in Outlook to match what I had.

Personally, I still have a little netbook that runs XP. I have no plans to upgrade. Seems to me that good third-party antivirus software would be sufficient.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I had a good old desktop computer that ran Windows XP. I abandoned it when Firefox ended support for it, and switched to a laptop which ran Windows 7. Last year due to technical problems with it (unrelated to Windows) I got a new laptop which runs Windows 10. Glad I did the switchover before the deadline.

[J N Winkler]

Not having any more security updates could be considered a bad thing, or it could be considered a good thing.

I'm not unaware of the potential for grief in the unlikely event I run into a zero-day vulnerability, but I've always felt the imperative to keep a computer updated is driven more by ecosystem management than by any benefits to disciplined power users who know what they are doing.  When you consider that the business model of free-to-use platforms is based on passively exposing the customer base to risks from third-party ad-hosting sites, and then look at how other people use their computers, it is not hard to imagine why Microsoft thinks it must take a coercive approach toward updates.  And from its point of view, the main risks of updates that withdraw existing functionality or even brick the PC are reputational:  liability is otherwise written out of existence.

I actually used to know a guy working in computational linguistics who didn't use antivirus software, claiming it was not necessary if one knew what one was doing.  In terms of infestations and data loss events, his record was much better than mine.  Admittedly, he spent most of his time on Unix-based OSes and was essentially at a sysop level of proficiency.

[bulldog1979]

At work, I use a laptop with Windows 10, but the other computers in the building were still on Windows 7 until the last few days. We use an accounting package that required the OS upgrade as of this week, although I think that may have been pushed back to April. Our Windows server is due for replacement/upgrade, and once that's done, they're planning to upgrade us from Office 2010 to Office 365.

At home, macOS all the way, just as it has been for the last 26 years. (Before that, we used GS/OS and before that, a Commodore.)

[Scott5114]

Our OTB betting terminals at work still run Windows XP. (Among other batshit design decisions that went into those things is an Ethernet-to-RS-232 adapter card...)

I like the new snipping tool (perhaps the one thing about Windows that I miss in Linux; the "take screenshot" accessory is not as elegant or powerful)

Depends on which desktop environment you have. The KDE screenshot utility is more powerful than the Windows one; it will even upload screenshots to Imgur for you so you can post them to the forum, and it is mapped to the Print Screen button so you don't have to have the icon permanently stuck to your desktop.

[index]

I still use Windows 7 and I have no plans to downgrade upgrade to Windows 10. I used it once for a while, hated it, and never looked back. I'm only going to think of switching over when the applications I use start dropping support for 7 which probably won't be for a while.

Our OTB betting terminals at work still run Windows XP. (Among other batshit design decisions that went into those things is an Ethernet-to-RS-232 adapter card...)

Have some more bizarre design. Here's RS232 in a wall plate.

Not quite as goofy as PS/2.

[wriddle082]

I've been using PCMatic antivirus on my HP Windows 7 laptop and home desktop for a couple of years, and they send out a couple of weekly newsletters.  In the one that came out on Monday, they had a link to a Windows site that offered free upgrades to Windows 10 as long as you were running a genuine copy of Windows 7.  I got it loaded on my laptop the other night, and it seems to be doing mostly ok except that the desktop background isn't displaying.  Once I get back home tomorrow, I will upgrade the desktop machine.

Here is the link to the article from the PCMatic newsletter:  https://davescomputertips.com/upgrade-windows-7-to-windows-10-for-free-now/?utm_source=EM_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-01-010%20Newsletter%20Day%202%20Warmup%20exc%20hotmail%20Recent&article=windows7to10&utm_content=subscriber_id:&ad_id=506258&share-ad-id=1

[bing101]

How about ReactOS, OS/2 and ArcaOS these Operating Systems are Windows derived though.

[KeithE4Phx]

How about ReactOS, OS/2 and ArcaOS these Operating Systems are were Windows derived though.

Fixed that for you. 

There's a reason why very few bother with these:  They've been obsolete since the turn of the century.  There is no reason whatsoever why anyone needs an updated version of a 1980s OS like Amiga, Atari ST TOS/GEM or OS/2.  What, no CP/M update? 

[bing101]

How about ReactOS, OS/2 and ArcaOS these Operating Systems are were Windows derived though.

Fixed that for you. 

There's a reason why very few bother with these:  They've been obsolete since the turn of the century.  There is no reason whatsoever why anyone needs an updated version of a 1980s OS like Amiga, Atari ST TOS/GEM or OS/2.  What, no CP/M update? 

Add some Haiku OS which is still in the 2000's apparently. BSD's are ones computer geeks use though.

[NJRoadfan]

There is no reason whatsoever why anyone needs an updated version of a 1980s OS like Amiga, Atari ST TOS/GEM or OS/2.  What, no CP/M update? 

GS/OS and ProDOS both got updates recently. People still use Apple IIs

[hbelkins]

I've noticed that since I was updated to Windows 10, the "PrtScn" key on my keyboard doesn't work. I've resorted to using an app called Skitch to take screenshots unless I can find another, better, faster, shorter way to capture an image of my screen.

I've had Windows 10 about a month, and am still not necessarily a fan.