Hey I had a question about Windows end of life support. I'm running Windows 7, which isn't supposed to expire for a while to come (no date set yet). Now, like many of us here, I like Windows 7. Why does Microsoft expire support for it's products? It's not because they want us to rush out and buy a copy of their new OS is it? Especially when Windows 7 works fine. So would it be possible to keep using Windows 7 in say 2030?
Its more than just economics. At some point things change and with new devices coming out, it doesnt make sense to try and continue to develop drivers, and fixes for an OS that is being used by less and less users.
While possible, chances are you wont. Will you even still be using a traditional computer in 18 years?
If you like win 7, you will love win 8. Right now it is about to go beta and will be free until it is released to marketing in a year or so.
You could keep using it (as long as you had hardware to run it), but Microsoft won't support it or release patches for it, and you won't be able to use newer hardware after a point when drivers stop being developed for it.
Microsoft supports "enterprise" products for 10 years after release, and "home use" products for 5. The reason for this is entirely economical - Microsoft has to pay people to provide support for the product, write and test security and non-security patches, etc. All of these things cost money (both in man-hours and also in test labs that can be used to build and test these products on hardware and virtualized, and in potentially thousands of different configurations), and as Microsoft produces newer versions of products, there are less bodies overall they can throw at the problem. Also (at least for Windows), the group that supports products once they pass certain milestones (usually Service Pack 1) supports *all* products at that level, which can be three and four major versions (for example, until Windows 2000 ended support in 2010, this group would be supporting Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP/Server 2003 x64, and Windows Vista/Server 2008). At some point, you have to cut ties with older code - it's not economically feasible (for the return on investment you'd get) to maintain a product forever, especially when there are 5 versions newer on the table (in the case of Windows 2000 in 2010, when it went End Of Life, or EOL).
It's like old cars. Soon or later their come a time to up date. It just take to many dollars and hours to keep old Betsey on the road.
Possible? I think so.
That assumes that you have hardware with drivers that support Windows 7, and that you don't need any security patches newer than the cutoff date. (If the machine is not connected to the internet, that would be OK.) It also assumes that you have software that'll run on Windows 7 at that time. I guess that you could stay with your current hardware and software, and hope that nothing breaks that can't be replaced.
I'm not sure how Microsoft would handle the Windows activation issue. Patch Win7 so that activation is not required, maybe.
Virtualization doesn't seem to have become wildly popular for desktop PCs at the moment, but maybe you'll be able to run Windows 7 on a virtual machine on your Windows 12 computer in 2030. (That's mostly a joke. I don't expect desktops PCs to be on the market in 2030.)
I would say, by 2030, USB will be an antiquity and will have been replaced by something far faster and superior, that the vast majority of what we'll be doing will be hosted remotely and we will be at IPv8 by then, and that home or business ethernet will have given way to fibre optics completely...
In short there will be nothing left for your Win7antiquemachine to connect to...
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or at least won't remember my password, where I put the darn thing, or who I am chatting with but will be having fun chasing the ladies around the senior home.