Windows 7 End of Life

Today was the official last day of support for Windows 7 (and a few other Microsoft products). I don’t have a whole lot to say about it since I stopped using it years ago, but unlike the end of support for Windows XP I will actually miss Windows 7. It was the first OS that I supported at the beginning of my IT career and was the first OS that I was tasked with doing mass deployments of.

I first tried out the Windows 7 Public Beta back in early 2009 on an Acer Aspire One A110L Netbook. I originally bought that Netbook in my last year of College, mostly because of it’s portability and good keyboard. It also had pretty decent battery life (at the time) and was very good at running Gentoo Linux, which at the time was my Linux distribution of choice. It was a pretty modest device for the time, using an Intel Atom N270 Processor (single core @ 1.60GHz), 512MB RAM, 8GB SSD and an 8.9" (1024x600) screen. I was very surprised as to how well it was able to run Windows 7, considering how poorly Windows XP and Windows Vista ran on the same device.

Positive feelings aside, this also brings up an annoying issue that keeps happening over and over again in IT. I can forgive the average home user for sticking with an Operating System or application because they are familiar with it or they don’t know how to upgrade it. At the end of the day, the retirement of Windows 7 did not just come out of nowhere, the date was set by Microsoft years ago. The inability for IT departments to plan ahead for these dates in infuriating the say the least, and because I am not in management it ultimately is my issue to deal with.

I could complain for hours on end about this issue so I’ll stop here, since this applies to pretty much everything in IT. At least Microsoft designed Windows 10 and Office 365 be a rolling release model so that it is easier to stay up to date. The last feature update for Windows 10 was the most seamless update I have every applied, so Microsoft has definitely figured it out (hopefully for good).

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