The legacy of Windows 7 - last of a breed?

I don't believe it's a change or age thing.
Many if not most of us have went through many changes in Windows before we ended up on Windows 7. Some would just like change to be for the better not just change for the sake of change.
For those of lesser years that were born, spanked and handed a i-phone Windows 8 is not change. A tablet is just a bigger i-phone which in many cases they feel completely comfortable with. Some of lesser years then tried a PC with Windows 7 and discovered it was different but liked it on a PC. I would bet such people still use the phone and tablet as it was designed to be used and a PC with Windows 7 as it was designed to be used. That is a good thing.
Then their is older folks that thought having a small phone you could carry around would be nice to have. They use it as a phone and some may text. They know their phone does more things but don't care, it's a carry around phone.
No tablets; it's just a big phone that won't fit in their pocket. Then they go home or work and use a PC with Windows 7 and know it's a PC and it does PC things the way a PC should do things. They are happy and thats a good thing.

If Windows 7 is the last version of a standard Windows GUI/system I find it quit a sad thought

dperecky said:

IMO, they should continue support for XP and all popular OSs (which by definition would exclude Vista) from then on, for perpetuity.

XP should be "Public Domained", if MS are going to stop supporting it.

If the law demanded "Public Domaining" of unsupported software, MS would support it forever.

theveterans said:

That would stop PC technology from improving since if XP is supported perpetually, many enterprise and budget conscious people won't even bother upgrading to the latest version, and therefore missing improvements that the newer OS have. In addition, hardware improvements would be stagnant or improve very slowly since the older OS won't be able to support the new features a new hardware would've like better multi-core multitasking and large RAM management of Windows 7 and 8.

Are you suggesting that people should be forced to replace their PCs, just because MS (or others Corporations) want to make a buck?

If the new systems are better, people will eventually start using them.

Cars didn't become the dominant private transportation method, because the car companies went out and shot all of the horses.