The end of Windows 7
As of this week, Windows 7 only has a year left of support and you know what this means... it will be XP all over again, but worse. Especially when a lot of people like myself don't really wish to upgrade to 10 and that some would rather stick to 7, despite the upcoming risks. It's a full year of important decisions for anyone.
I think when the time draws nearer, I may just get myself a Macbook/Chromebook for internet browsing only (through the wireless of my router) and still use this laptop of seven years for offline/legacy stuff. Just hope Microsoft won't do anything harsh to us even with a thing called "planned obsolescence", yet we've heard rumours of them trying to kill off 7 earlier.
Let's talk about it, and have your say on what will be your next steps, if you're a devoted 7 user like myself.
Comments
I'm not very concerned by the end of updates; POSReady 7 is supported until October 2021 and its updates are compatible with the regular Windows 7 (though you will need WSUS to download them I think; you can't fake the OS type like with XP).
Anyway, I have avoided all Windows updates since December 2017 (as well as telemetry and GWX ones from 2015) due to reductions in performance and severe bugs (https://zdnet.com/article/microsofts-killer-windows-7-patch-breaks-networking-bricks-legit-not-genuine-pcs/). They've been pulling this crap since the Windows 95 comctl32.dll memory leak that came bundled with IE 5 (which itself came bundled with 98SE).
I did keep a Windows 8.1 PC receiving updates and that resulted in: OS corruption last year, general sluggishness, installing a shitty Intel graphics driver that caused several crashes as well as the OS deactivating itself for a few days (even though it has an SLIC in the BIOS).
8 1/2 years of unsupported Windows 2000 online has been nothing short of peaceful for those with a strong firewall and common sense like me. Windows 7 should be fine (maybe with an antivirus too, to account for the greater quantity of malicious code compatible with NT 6.x)
About POSReady 7, did you make use of these updates yourself? Just hope it won't cause a frankenstein of a system like what people were doing with XP through a registry hack. And, oh no... they've been sending out crappy updates since that long ago? Wow, that's something I've learned today.
I think @nick99nack serves the web with a fortified Win2000 also, if memory serves me.
I haven't tried those out but I've been reading up on sites like the MSFN forums about Windows 7/8.x updates.
The two OSes are fundamentally similar, although POSready is more modular (can be cut down in size, doesn't include many consumer-oriented features). Most vulnerabilites do lie in IE and other networking components so they should be patched.
But in the case of my standard XP Pro, it did exhibit some weird behaviour after being updated to September 2018 (explorer becoming unresponsive after clicking "about windows" as well as taking several minutes to shut down). But others on MSFN seemingly fare better.
It's par for the course for M$ since they laid off their QC department in 2014 though. Thankfully that was when they stopped sending out win2k updates on their monthly security ISOs (now replaced by monthly rollups) so they couldn't really screw it up as well.
I only have two machines running Windows 7 at this point (My main desktop and my Mom's desktop) and I'm not looking forward to upgrading them. In the past, with XP, I just wound up upgrading the OS when I upgraded the hardware and I may do the same thing now. It's getting about time for newer hardware. Although what I have still works perfectly fine for most things. Just not gaming.
One way or another though, I will be getting rid of Windows 7. It's just not going to be a fun process. So far my Windows 10 enterprise installs have been doing ok, so I guess it's just time to bite the bullet.
My dad use windows xp until 2015 and there are two options windows 7 as a virtual machine in Linux and if it the VM dies we back up.Or upgrade to windows 10 AKA ¨crapitoch plus¨.or convince him into installing windows 2000 64-bit or just use windows 7 with extra protections like
a antiviris and a firewall
well i will still be using XP untill i need a new OS.