Windows 7 extended support ends on January 14, 2020

Thanks MD, I was thinking of checking into Linux..

Windows Vista officially had its EOL in 2017 and updates are still available for it until 2020 and easily available online.

Windows 7 is getting extended paid security updates for enterprise until 2023. They won't be available through Windows update to us, but that could be seen as more of a blessing these days!
I'm not sure how MS is intending to deliver the updates, but if they're delivered as MSUs, these will most likely "find their way" online and be available to download somewhere (this can be a good or bad thing though, depending on where you're getting them from). WSUSOffline could also be a future option to continue getting the updates, but again I'm not sure how they're being made available.

Banyarola said:

Well, so far most of what I read have been personal opinions and feelings..
Not much about what preventive measures anyone is taking or methods to make up for the lack of no security updates when end of life happens.

What specific preventative measures are you referring to though? I've just listed a few above as an example that I'll be using. It wasn't meant to be a comprehensive list, I was just giving some examples. Those weren't just "feelings" though, they were genuine suggestions. I'm always open to any new suggestions though.
There's plenty of other suggestions such as don't download pirated software from dodgy websites, and be careful what you're clicking (this is where good browser protection helps).

There's much better preventative measures than just installing windows security updates though. There are users on here who haven't installed updates since the Windows 10 upgrade push (not my personal choice, but that's up to them), and their systems are still running fine. I've even noticed some users saying they haven't installed updates in years.

Anyway, these days if somebody is really determined to find a way into your PC, they could find a way with or without windows security updates. Most hackers aren't that interested in getting photos or documents from Uncle Jim's 15 year old PC though. They're going after much bigger and more important targets these days. You're probably more likely to get your details stolen from a website hack than a PC hack. If a website gets hacked and they get your personal details from that - Windows updates aren't going to make a blind bit of difference to that anyway. Now ransomware - that's a different kettle of fish. And that's where decent ransomware protection comes in. I also lock my PCs down with a lot of software restriction policies too.

I'm not saying everyone should be nonchalant about the issue, but I'm not concerned about any post 2020 impending PC apocalypse either. There's always a risk with anything that's attached to the Internet these days.

What are you planning to do Banyarola? Switch to Linux as MD suggested? I'm slowly learning it (and I do mean slowly), but don't think I'll be quite ready to go full Linux by January.

Just curious, if I wanted to roll back to the last update that behaved itself, what would that be?

michael diemer said:

Just curious, if I wanted to roll back to the last update that behaved itself, what would that be?

I believe both Lehnerus and Lady F stopped installing them in December 2017.
I think that's around the time when the Spectre/Meltdown fixes were pushed out which were reportedly slowing down some older PCs on 7 & 8.1. I'm still running Haswell and Gigabyte has yet to officially push out a BIOS update for it, although they did email me a beta BIOS for my board after I contacted them. I haven't noticed any day to day slowdowns though.

I think MS pushed out their update which threw up the "Unsupported Hardware" error on 7 & 8.1 for later CPUs in May 2017. Again, totally unnecessary as both 7 & 8.1 work fine on newer CPUs.
Just another one of MS "persuasions" to get people to upgrade to 10, luckily there are ways around it. The more they do things like that, the more people aren't going to want to upgrade. And most who wanted to upgrade would have likely done it by now anyway.

I've carried on installing them as I like to report back here and see if there are any bork ups that month (and probably because I'm a sucker for punishment ).

I think the general feeling is that the last couple years of updates haven't really been all that great though!

Than you, I have a system image from une 2017 that I recently installed temporarily, to see if it had a working version of a program I can't seem to activate anymore. I suppose I could use that image and install updates until December if I continue to experience update problems.

What about Microsoft's plan to sell continued Win7 support? cost?

Melchior said:

What about Microsoft's plan to sell continued Win7 support? cost?

So far, all I've been able to find is this:

As Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Office and Windows Marketing, explained: “Today we are announcing that we will offer paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis and the price will increase each year.”

No pricing details were revealed (I suspect it’s a lot) and Spataro confirmed these would only be offered to customers running Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise in Volume Licensing – aka large businesses. Consequently this excludes the vast majority of Windows 7 users, as the operating system still runs on almost 40% of computers worldwide.

So, for enterprise customers, it'll probably be expensive and will increase every year, giving them more incentive to upgrade to 10. Home or small businesses won't be able to purchase them though, but that's not to say they won't be available somewhere. As they're on a per-device basis, who knows what they'll decide to charge. I can't see them being cheap though.