Security updates for Windows 7 ostensibly end tomorrow, but also officially continue until 2023

[leadeater]

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I do work for a very sensitive Swedish state agency and I do it on my Windows 10 computer. No special "government edition OS".

And yes, it is classified data, and no, I am not breaking any protocols. There are other security measurements in place though.

That is true for most places, I know there is a China Gov edition but I'm not sure if the US has asked for something similar. Those other security measures were also what I was talking about too, it's not just Windows 10 default install with zero configuration etc.

[mr moose]

57 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

 

That depends on what you define as "nefarious". I mean, Google hasn't been caught any more than Microsoft has but they are still a privacy nightmare (just like Microsoft). It's just that what they are doing hasn't been too illegal so they can't really be punished. The reason why I say "too illegal" is because both Google and Microsoft have been caught violating several privacy laws in the last couple of years, but have received little more than slaps on their wrists.

 

 

 

Google have been taken to court here in Australia for collecting data they told users they were not collecting. I define nefarious as anything we aren't told about that is used in a way the average person would not be O.K with.  E.G selling your web browsing history to a third party without permission.

 

legality typically only becomes a problem when a company makes it look like one thing but does another,  MS got in trouble for that because they hid their PP in the basement oft heir website and there was no way to read it while installing windows.   And even then it is jurisdiction specific, In Australia that would be illegal, in most of the EU that would be illegal, not in the US though.

 

It looks like California is updating its privacy laws to account for new digital issue (I use the word new to define any issues that develop faster than laws can evolve to address).  But I doubt they are as good as the EU laws because MS don't seem t have to change anything to remain legal.  They had to change several things to become GDPR compliant and meet dutch regulations.

 

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

Oh good grief, the amount of a shitstorm my passing comment caused.

 

And, as expected, the usual keyboard experts who so smugly insist on things that they themselves have zero clue on how such things actually work, all come out of the woodwork and make complete fool of themselves.

 

Come on guys; I understand that this degree of mental gymnastics is quite exhausting, but the least I expect was some creativity. Same attitude, same mannerisms, same endorsements of questionable actions... all of that gets boring and dull rather quickly.

 

As to my original point, I stand firmly by it. Don't have the compatible software for the current-gen OS because the devs are lazy or out of the job? Then make them yourself, or at the very least cobble together a hacky interim solution. If you are really pushy towards "verified to be fully functional" software, if it is so important for you to use disgustingly out-of-date software for this unicorn concept of "total stability", then switch to a BSD operating system or, I don't know, AN RTOS WITH AN ACTUAL MICROKERNEL??

[AlwaysFSX]

19 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

Then make them yourself, or at the very least cobble together a hacky interim solution.

Alex what is stability for $500

20 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

if it is so important for you to use disgustingly out-of-date software for this unicorn concept of "total stability", then switch to a BSD operating system or, I don't know, AN RTOS WITH AN ACTUAL MICROKERNEL??

Gosh why isn't everyone doing this. They can't all possibly come up with reasonable reasons not to.

[mr moose]

57 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Alex what is stability for $500

Gosh why isn't everyone doing this. They can't all possibly come up with reasonable reasons not to.

I think his point was that the number of people who are in that situation is so small it isn't a reason to keep recommending people run an outdated unsupported OS, ergo if you are in a position where stability is more important than the OS you should be running BSD or similar old school mainframe like the banks do. 

 

People do like to use the "it must be 100% stable 24/7 up time or it isn't good enough" argument when questioned why they don't like updates in 10 (but that doesn't hold much water as a legitimate reason).

 

This whole thing for the most part is just silly.  There is no evidence to suggest windows 10 is worse than 7 in any way so why is it even a discussion?  The only people who won't migrate to 10 when they can are the people who have been so intently opposed to it from the start now suffer chagrin at the mere thought of upgrading. 

[AlwaysFSX]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I think his point was that the number of people who are in that situation is so small it isn't a reason to keep recommending people run an outdated unsupported OS, ergo if you are in a position where stability is more important than the OS you should be running BSD or similar old school mainframe like the banks do. 

 

People do like to use the "it must be 100% stable 24/7 up time or it isn't good enough" argument when questioned why they don't like updates in 10 (but that doesn't hold much water as a legitimate reason).

 

This whole thing for the most part is just silly.  There is no evidence to suggest windows 10 is worse than 7 in any way so why is it even a discussion?  The only people who won't migrate to 10 when they can are the people who have been so intently opposed to it from the start now suffer chagrin at the mere thought of upgrading. 

I get that, to a degree, but there's also the peace of mind knowing what your running support costs and where it can or won't fail. Spending money to go to an unknown setup and changing your software structure isn't sensible for most places.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

I get that, to a degree, but there's also the peace of mind knowing what your running support costs and where it can or won't fail. Spending money to go to an unknown setup and changing your software structure isn't sensible for most places.

That is actually why most business upgrade their fleets frequently, they avoid having to wear the support costs by doing so.  The only industries that can't upgrade from 7 to 10 are the same industries who still use xp and that reason hasn't changed (hence why they are paying for extended support). 

 

 

 

 

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

19 minutes ago, AlwaysFSX said:

I get that, to a degree, but there's also the peace of mind knowing what your running support costs and where it can or won't fail. Spending money to go to an unknown setup and changing your software structure isn't sensible for most places.

In most of these settings where stability may actually be mission-critical, using an operating system that has a large monolithic kernel (linux) or those that do not process hardware instructions at a fixed maximum time frame (basically, any OS that is consumer-oriented) are really ill-advised. To be in such a situation where complete platform stability is a priority above all else, you would require some specialized equipment tailored to your objectives, including hardware, OS, firmware, and software. An RTOS guarantees minimal execution delay of multiple processes and threads running concurrently, which is important in an industrial and enterprise setting.

[laurayuan]

I'm using Windows 7 for five years and don't want to give it up. Is there any way to use Windows 7 and never upgrade to Windows 10 forever?

[Quinnell]

1 minute ago, laurayuan said:

I'm using Windows 7 for five years and don't want to give it up. Is there any way to use Windows 7 and never upgrade to Windows 10 forever?

You can, but you will not get any security updates.  Also, newer software will often not be tested for compatibility with Windows 7 in near future.  

[Commodus]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

This is not true and hasn't been true for ages. Modern anti-virus software uses heuristic and are able to detect and block previously unknown threats too. Of course it's not something you can and should rely on 100%, but I think it's dangerous to give out false information like that.

True, heuristics can detect previously unknown threats.  Sorry about that.  However, zero-day threats are considered dangerous even if you have AV software that can detect previously unseen threats, precisely because they might not be caught or might even go out of their way to hide themselves from those detection methods.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Well Avast will support Windows 7 for 2 more years

 

https://blog.avast.com/avast-still-supports-windows-7

 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, laurayuan said:

I'm using Windows 7 for five years and don't want to give it up. Is there any way to use Windows 7 and never upgrade to Windows 10 forever?

As quinnnel said, you can (you don't have to do anything). But it will get harder as over time hardware drivers won't have the necessary OS refinements and software (games etc) might start to become unstable etc.  No one can tell you exactly how long it will take to become unworkable but we can tell you the risk in getting malware goes higher from day 1.

 

 

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

I think his point was that the number of people who are in that situation is so small it isn't a reason to keep recommending people run an outdated unsupported OS, ergo if you are in a position where stability is more important than the OS you should be running BSD or similar old school mainframe like the banks do. 

Home users? Very, very few.

Companies? A lot of them are in that situation. Especially companies that work with things like very expensive machinery and robotics. I know at least 4 of my clients (works as consultant) are in that situation. So that's 4 companies at the very least, just in a small city in Sweden.

It's not that easy to "just upgrade" either. Even IF they had the money to buy in brand new machines, which would easily exceed their entire years of profits, and then some more, the downtime, and risk associated with making the change would also add on to the cost.

If Windows 7 just stopped working tomorrow, several companies would just flat out go under because it is not possible to upgrade to some other OS (money wise, or time wise).

 

But yeah, for home users it should be very, very rare. And if you for some reason have some program that won't work on Windows 10, just run it in a VM that's shut down most of the time.

 

 

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

This whole thing for the most part is just silly.  There is no evidence to suggest windows 10 is worse than 7 in any way so why is it even a discussion?  The only people who won't migrate to 10 when they can are the people who have been so intently opposed to it from the start now suffer chagrin at the mere thought of upgrading. 

There is a ton of legitimate arguments for why Windows 7 is better than Windows 10. Almost all of them are very situational though, like compatibility.

But I think there is one argument that you can't argue against and that's "I just don't like Windows 10". Some people just don't like Windows 10 for some reason(s), just like some people don't like Chrome, or Firefox, or broccoli or whatever.

 

 

1 hour ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

In most of these settings where stability may actually be mission-critical, using an operating system that has a large monolithic kernel (linux) or those that do not process hardware instructions at a fixed maximum time frame (basically, any OS that is consumer-oriented) are really ill-advised. To be in such a situation where complete platform stability is a priority above all else, you would require some specialized equipment tailored to your objectives, including hardware, OS, firmware, and software. An RTOS guarantees minimal execution delay of multiple processes and threads running concurrently, which is important in an industrial and enterprise setting.

You'd be surprised at how often those kinds of machines in some way rely on Windows. A lot of times the actual robots and machines run something like GNU/Linux in the background but uses a Windows machine as the front-end. No Windows with the right program? No way of interacting with the robot/machine.

 

And RTOSes are not required in a lot of situations which require stability. In fact, RTOSes are not about stability at all (although they tend to be very stable). It's about predictability, which is not necessary in a lot of industrial applications.

 

 

1 hour ago, laurayuan said:

I'm using Windows 7 for five years and don't want to give it up. Is there any way to use Windows 7 and never upgrade to Windows 10 forever?

Just keep using it and don't upgrade. You can keep doing that forever. Updates ending does not mean you are forced to upgrade to Windows 10. It becomes less and less of a good idea though because your OS will as time goes on have more and more publicly known vulnerabilities associated with it.

 

 

1 hour ago, Commodus said:

True, heuristics can detect previously unknown threats.  Sorry about that.  However, zero-day threats are considered dangerous even if you have AV software that can detect previously unseen threats, precisely because they might not be caught or might even go out of their way to hide themselves from those detection methods.

Absolutely! Completely agree with that. Like I said, it's not something you should rely on, but I have seen a worrying number of people make absolute statements about the capabilities of anti-virus software and I thought I'd point it out.

[Delicieuxz]

1 hour ago, laurayuan said:

I'm using Windows 7 for five years and don't want to give it up. Is there any way to use Windows 7 and never upgrade to Windows 10 forever?

 

Bypass discovered to allow Windows 7 Extended Security Updates on all systems

 

If that works and you're going to keep using your current hardware, then you're set until 2023.

 

Even without security updates, you could use an anti-virus that protects Windows 7, like CalintzJerevinan mentioned Avast does. Or, like some people do (and as I did for several years), you could run the OS without any protection - but make sure you back up all your important files.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Home users? Very, very few.

Companies? A lot of them are in that situation. Especially companies that work with things like very expensive machinery and robotics. I know at least 4 of my clients (works as consultant) are in that situation. So that's 4 companies at the very least, just in a small city in Sweden.

It's not that easy to "just upgrade" either. Even IF they had the money to buy in brand new machines, which would easily exceed their entire years of profits, and then some more, the downtime, and risk associated with making the change would also add on to the cost.

If Windows 7 just stopped working tomorrow, several companies would just flat out go under because it is not possible to upgrade to some other OS (money wise, or time wise).

 

But yeah, for home users it should be very, very rare. And if you for some reason have some program that won't work on Windows 10, just run it in a VM that's shut down most of the time.

 

To be honest, for majority of business who are offices and do basic data entry I just can't see what would prevent them from going from 7 to 10.  I know a lot in allied health have all made the change (larger companies with multi level office buildings).   Its the ones on the ground in factories or with very specific software that might have trouble.

 

Quote

 

There is a ton of legitimate arguments for why Windows 7 is better than Windows 10. Almost all of them are very situational though, like compatibility.

But I think there is one argument that you can't argue against and that's "I just don't like Windows 10". Some people just don't like Windows 10 for some reason(s), just like some people don't like Chrome, or Firefox, or broccoli or whatever.

 

Fair enough, I would never tell someone what they like and don't like.  As someone who started with dos then had to make the change from dos 3.1, dos 6 dos, 6.1 windows, windows 3.11 then every bloody edition after that (I also had to learn dr dos 3.31 fortunately it was almost a CC of dos).  As a creature of habit I can attest to how shit it is having to learn a new UI with all the little changes they make.  But at the end of the day tech moves and people evolve, if we don't go with the flow then we stagnate and become grumpy old people complaining about back in my day, the type of people many on this forum love to point to as "tech illiterate".

 

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

similar old school mainframe like the banks do. 

 

Oi, I will have you horse whipped for that. Our mainframes are not old school but are modern devices capable of amazing things when used for specific tasks. Fujitsu BS2000/OSD is very stable, and very secure as no bugger knows anything about it. We can run huge databases in 8GB of ram faster and more efficiently than a whole room of x86 boxes maxed out can. As I say, very dedicated to a task but not old school.

 

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

This whole thing for the most part is just silly.  There is no evidence to suggest windows 10 is worse than 7 in any way so why is it even a discussion?  The only people who won't migrate to 10 when they can are the people who have been so intently opposed to it from the start now suffer chagrin at the mere thought of upgrading. 

For the home user I totally agree. Most of the crap spoken about windows 10 is just that, crap. We went through it with XP-7 and again now to 10. People fear change, it is just human nature. We try and cling on to what we know. Just look at cars for instance, we all know that a big V8 Diesel is bad for our health and the environment but still find excuses to continue to buy them instead of moving to alternatives. 
 

Having said that there are cases where change is not easy. Take the NHS here in the UK. The n some hospitals there is a patient information and entertainment system at every bed. They are basically TVs with an embedded windows OS (XP in this case) running bespoke software. To change thousands of these would be very expensive and very environmentally poor. It was not a good idea to go that route with hindsight but to just jump now is not an easy task. There are many cases like this which all need to be considered.

[mr moose]

54 minutes ago, Phill104 said:

Oi, I will have you horse whipped for that. Our mainframes are not old school but are modern devices capable of amazing things when used for specific tasks. Fujitsu BS2000/OSD is very stable, and very secure as no bugger knows anything about it. We can run huge databases in 8GB of ram faster and more efficiently than a whole room of x86 boxes maxed out can. As I say, very dedicated to a task but not old school.

 

For the home user I totally agree. Most of the crap spoken about windows 10 is just that, crap. We went through it with XP-7 and again now to 10. People fear change, it is just human nature. We try and cling on to what we know. Just look at cars for instance, we all know that a big V8 Diesel is bad for our health and the environment but still find excuses to continue to buy them instead of moving to alternatives. 
 

Having said that there are cases where change is not easy. Take the NHS here in the UK. The n some hospitals there is a patient information and entertainment system at every bed. They are basically TVs with an embedded windows OS (XP in this case) running bespoke software. To change thousands of these would be very expensive and very environmentally poor. It was not a good idea to go that route with hindsight but to just jump now is not an easy task. There are many cases like this which all need to be considered.

Oh I Agree, there are cases where it can't "just be done", that's why I said earlier that those who can't go from 7 to 10 are the people who are still on XP (like the NHS).   

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

To be honest, for majority of business who are offices and do basic data entry I just can't see what would prevent them from going from 7 to 10.  I know a lot in allied health have all made the change (larger companies with multi level office buildings).   Its the ones on the ground in factories or with very specific software that might have trouble.

Yeah the 4 companies I alluded to earlier are all in the factory/industrial space.

Office computers are 95% of the time fine to just upgrade. They might need to upgrade some programs to a new version but those are fairly minor issues. Shouldn't cost too much time or money. It's the robots and other machinery that are the issues. That and small custom made solutions that might have poor or no documentation. Things like automation scripts that some old employee that no longer works at the company hacked together 10 years ago and now half the company relies on it.

 

 

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

if we don't go with the flow then we stagnate and become grumpy old people complaining about back in my day

I have no problem being that type of person

New is not always better, so I think in a lot of situations clinging on to the old is better than jumping on the newest thing just because it's new. If @leadeaterhas worked with some of the new Cisco products (like FTD) he can probably attest to "newer does not mean better".

[Sir Asvald]

On 1/14/2020 at 12:02 AM, FezBoy said:

F.

 

 

 

 

TBH I can't think of anyone I know who still runs windows 7.

I use it at home for my network. Unfortunately Some software refuse to work with Windows 10. It'll say, this software doesn't work with Windows 10. Anyway the software doesn't need internet access, so I'm good. For now..

[Luna.exe]

On 1/14/2020 at 6:34 AM, Donut417 said:

I had a legal copy of XPx64. It was a horrible slow OS. It worked but it was clunky at best. 

sounds like windows 10 XD slow bloated designed to steal your info and clunky cant wait for 10 to lose support but yet again something worse will come out 

[Quinnell]

6 minutes ago, Luna.exe said:

sounds like windows 10 XD slow bloated designed to steal your info and clunky cant wait for 10 to lose support but yet again something worse will come out 

You might be waiting a while.  Microsoft has stated Windows 10 is the last version of Windows.  It's supposed to be perpetually developed.

[Ezzy-525]

On 1/14/2020 at 12:22 AM, jsweet said:

My work still does, though we are currently waiting for about 100 new machines to get imaged, so we can start deploying them.

Same here. We've got a room full of brand new HP systems which arrived in December but our IT guys haven't been arsed to dish them out yet.

 

Thankfully I got my new one as a tester in October (along with NVMe storage and more RAM, which the others dont get ) It works out well when you're the only one in the company who knows anything about computers.

[Luna.exe]

30 minutes ago, Quinnell said:

You might be waiting a while.  Microsoft has stated Windows 10 is the last version of Windows.  It's supposed to be perpetually developed.

its been slow since relese its been a few years lol 

 

[jagdtigger]

19 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

just because they didn't shout about it on every website

It wasnt announced on their websize either. Not to mention it was undocumented in the beginning. They only released a list after governement agencies put a pressure on them(and im sure its still partial).  So yes they practically did it in secret and drop your tinfoil hat accusation. After all the lies they spout out about telemetry i dont need one to presume the worst about this scumbag company.