I read an article yesterday from Computer World that called out Microsoft's patching plan moving forward with Windows 10 and dropping support for Windows 7 and 8. The crux of the article is that Microsoft are a bunch of idiots for their support strategy, that they are screwing over Enterprise IT, and how awful it is that they refuse to support the latest hardware with operating systems that were released nearly five and a half years ago.
The article has a bunch of quotes, including the lines "refusing to honor", talking about Microsoft's agreements to support older hardware and that "The trust is gone", in terms of Microsoft laying out agreements and support plans. The hyperbole would be hilarious if the people who said it didn't believe it so strongly.
You could click the link above to read it yourself, but it really a lousy piece of whining and Microsoft bashing, for what appears to be no other reason that to bash Microsoft for a while. The comments are pretty good though. (For a more level-headed, informative, article, and one that also shows what new hardware will be supported on Windows 7 and 8, I'd suggest this piece in PC World by Mark Hachman)
Windows 7 ended its mainstream support in January of 2015. That means no new features. Why in the world would people expect new features, including hardware drivers, which can destabilize an operating system, to be added to a product that is past its mainstream support cycle? Windows 8.1 has a support date of January 2018, so I could see being a little upset about that if your shop adopted Windows 8.1, but I don't know many that did. And if you did adopt Windows 8, you're probably not rushing out to buy new hardware.
My biggest problem with the Computer World article is this: For years, Microsoft was ripped apart in the technology world and press for how vulnerable and unstable their products could be. A lot of that had to do with how much backwards compatibility they tried to keep around for legacy hardware, legacy software, and to keep older software running on newer hardware. That much change at core levels of code will cause problems. That's all there is to it.
In an era where more and more things are moving to computing and cloud platforms, security, stability, and up time are of the utmost priority. Microsoft cannot keep a good name for its brands if it knows there are gaping flaws still out there in the wild. It doesn't matter that they've fixed the issues and have been practically begging people to patch them, it's still up to the end user to install the update. And if the end user doesn't follow the patching directions or stays on older hardware with older software, guess who's name gets dragged through the mud: it's not the family down the road that won't upgrade. It's Microsoft.
Plain and simple, Microsoft must push people to upgrade to the latest software. They are throwing in a huge carrot by making it free. If it is a big, painful operation to handle that level of upgrade at your shop, you need to put in the procedures to deal with it. I work in a highly regulated industry. I know how much of a pain that it can be. But the bottom line is that you have to do it.
Microsoft is making the right move here. People need to move up to the latest software and they can't lollygag while doing it. Microsoft is even trying to make it as easy as possible in the IT world. But they, and the computer world as a whole, can no longer make it so you have no incentive to upgrade. Waiting two to three years to adopt a new operating system just isn't feasible any more and it is time to move on.
