going forward, new software won't support Windows 7?

I was talking to a rep from Best Buy (I know...), and I explained that I'm looking for a PC that comes pre-installed with Windows 7 for my girlfriend's sister. She really has no interest in moving to Windows 8 currently, unless she has no say in the matter. Dell's website currently still lets you choose 7 or 8, but Best Buy only gives you 8 if you buy a Dell from them, no 7. So the rep told me that she should strongly consider moving to 8 because all newer versions of software will not run on 7 so she will be unable to use the latest versions of her various software because they will only support 8 as new software and updates come out.

Is there even a shred of truth to this? I find that hard to believe. So then all newer versions of Winrar, 7-zip, Open Office, ImgBurn, etc will only run on 8? That sounds like utter nonsense to me. Perhaps she's just talking about Microsoft software? Can anybody chime in here?

Window 7 is MS and the PC's only viable consumer desktop OS, so I doubt whether developers are going to skip over it to write for Win8 unless it's related the touchscreen required to run it properly.

Best Buy took all mention of Win8 out of its Sunday newspaper ads, yet big banners on select PC's advertising Win7.

They may have been trying to pressure you to buy one of the 8 PC's no one wants and are being brought back angrily by online buyers who never asked for a phone app as their OS.

If and when they come to their senses MS will offer Upgrades to Win7 to all those stuck with 8 on Desktop PC's. Then they can begin to develop a worthy successor to Win7 which they still don't recognize for what it is: the best OS ever.

Thanks guys! Yeah it sounded like quite the tale to me, but then you never know what crazy things these companies are capable of. I mean there are thousands of programs out there for every need - she actually wanted me to believe that nothing will run on Windows 7 going forward. Best Buy ought to be ashamed of themselves for tactics like that. But when money is concerned, I guess anything goes.

Each new operating system has features that developers can take advantage to improve their software. Developers have an incentive to move to the newer OS. But they also want to have as large a market as is reasonably possible to maintain and that means supporting older operating systems. But for any OS there comes a time when the difficulties in supporting it are no longer worth the small portion of the market it represents. That has happened with Windows 2000 and prior and is happening with XP. But the process isn't sudden and may take years.

The day will come when Windows 7 is abandoned by developers in favor of new systems that offer more features. But that won't happen until the user base of Windows 7 has shrunk to a point where the cost of not supporting it is small. I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.

I don't understand how this even an issue anyway. Since Vista/7 we have enjoyed the greatest age of backwards compatibility since... well ever as far as I'm aware. It's one of the few selling points of 8.

Microsoft is very concerned about backward compatibility and this goes back long before Vista. Even in Windows 95 Microsoft went to great lengths to ensure that older applications would continue to run. Even when those applications broke the rules and did things the developers were explicitly warned not to. Many developers have said that Microsoft has gone too far and should allow misbehaving applications to fail and thus force developers to fix the problems. The problem with this being that regardless of the cause, Microsoft will receive the blame for the application failures.

Many applications developed for Windows 2000 and even older work without change in Windows 8. But it is those that fail that receive the publicity.