Software giant Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 and 8.1 will be discontinued from October 31, 2016 and the only software which will come in new devices will be Windows 10.
The lone exception will be businesses with license agreements that entitle them to choose which version of Windows they want preinstalled.
The deadline puts pressure on consumers who have grown comfortable with Windows 7 and are reluctant to upgrade their operating system if they buy a new PC.
Many of Windows 7 users may not realise it, but they actually caught a break. Microsoft typically sets the end-of-sales date for each version of Windows two years after the release of a new version.
That means Windows 7’s cutoff date should have been in October 2014, two years after the launch of Windows 8. The lack of consumer demand for Windows 8 prompted Microsoft to keep Windows 7 alive longer than expected.
Despite the extended deadline for Windows 7 and 8.1, Microsoft is heavily pushing Windows 10.
