Hi all
Thought I would do a post here as none of the tech sites or individual bloggers I follow have done anything around the future of Windows 7, and it would be great to see if anyone could provide some answers. So if anyone could help with these points (or Paul would perhaps kindly write an article!) that would be great! Here’s some of the things I’d like to know:
Microsoft Edge (based on Chrome): after Jan 14, 2020 will it continue to receive security updates? If the updates are delivered via Microsoft Update, I’d guess the answer is no. If they come via a Windows Service (as Chrome and Firefox currently do on Win7) then I guess the answer is one of: (a) yes, but only for enterprise customers paying for support until 2023; (b) yes, for as long as Google also support Chrome on Windows 7; (c) until Microsoft decide or (d) there will be no updates, making it a security risk. It’s kind of hard at the moment to know if I should recommend friends or family on Windows 7 try the “Chrome Edge” as it’d be a bit pointless if it’ll get no further updates after the last Patch Tuesday…
Office365: after Jan 14, 2020, for home users or companies not paying for extended support, will it still install, activate and receive monthly updates? Will OneDrive still sync on Win7? I know of friends who have Windows 7 computers and use the Family Pack (the one where up-to 5 PCs can use Office365). Will it still work on Windows 7 after end-of-life?
Windows Updates and Activation: if anyone re-installs Windows 7 after Jan 14, 2020, will it still activate, and will Windows Updates still download? I know for Windows Vista that it is very difficult to get the updates to now download, and I believe both XP and Vista now only support phone-based activation, not Internet-based.
Windows 10 upgrade: after Jan 14, 2020 can Windows 7 licence-keys still be used to upgrade to Windows 10, such as during a clean-install of Windows 10 (Ed Bott hasn’t done an update of his article on this lately…)?
Drivers: do we know of any major PC components (such as AMD or nVidia video-cards) where there has been a public announcement for end-of-support for drivers on Windows 7 yet?
(I know both have dropped support for new features and moved to security-fix-only on all 32-bit Windows, but that’s due to the 4GB memory limit.)
Common Apps: have any popular apps said when Windows 7 support will end? The only one I know-of for sure is Office 2019 is Windows 10 only, but that’s from Microsoft. Anyone know of any major third-party paid or free apps saying when they will drop support?
TLS 1.3: given the release of “Chrome Edge” on Windows 7, will TLS 1.3 be backported, or will Edge either use it’s own library to support this, or only support up-to TLS 1.2 on Win 7?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any information here!
bharris
<blockquote><em><a href="#443026">In reply to jchampeau:</a></em></blockquote><p>Which is why I cannot understand including Windows 7 in the Chromium based Edge development. I think it gave a false impression (& hope), that Windows 7 is still going to be supported in some fashion. Even if it was no more effort, I think it would have have been best to deliberately make it not work just to drive home that we're moving on…..</p>
bharris
<blockquote><a href="#443034"><em>In reply to jchampeau:</em></a><em> That is probably it. But, in my experience, big places are using custom apps that only run in old Internet Explorer versions anyhow. Last place before retiring, we had to keep a few machines running IE 7 for a specific application. My only point is a lot of the places that can afford the ongoing support are also places with legacy apps that will only work on IE anyhow.</em></blockquote>
bharris
<blockquote><a href="#443454"><em>In reply to curtisspendlove:</em></a><em> And some things, it isn't as simple as just throwing money at it. The place that I was at had an 18 year old app, I think in .Net. When I left, a year ago, they had hired an outside firm to re-write it on a modern platform. As of two months ago, the existing system had stopped working, the re-write is no where near complete & no one has a solution. Personally, I think the VP of app development should be fired. I think anyone on that level that allows a vital application to get so stale that it stops working and no one has the knowledge to fix it, shouldn't have the job. This is a company with 25,000 employees. It's too big for stuff like this to go on…..</em></blockquote><p><br></p>