According to an official announcement found on Microsoft’s support website, it appears that starting form Tuesday, January 13, 2015 there will be no more mainstream support for the operating system.
This means that excluding security fixes / patches, no other kind of update / support will be delivered by Microsoft to its Windows 7 users.
These type of updates will only be available for those who paid for “extended support” and they’ll continue until January 14, 2020, which is also the date when security updates will stop completely.
Unlike Windows XP which was mainstream supported for a little over 7 years, Windows 7 on the contrary is getting mainstream support for only about 5 and a half years.
This, some are saying, is possibly a clever move by Microsoft to encourage people to switch over to Windows 8 which is currently seeing only a very minor market share, comparing to its older “brothers”.
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