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Comment by LoSboccacc | Hacker News Reader

Meh. I see many users happy with the free upgrade, and many business badly hurt because they were using the home version instead of a properly configured pro/enterprise.

I just don't buy in the hyperbole., besides windows 7 is out of support and windows 8 is going off next year. Those users will be the next in line into botnets.

At least microsoft takes backward compatibility seriously and upgrades are relatively painless compared to, say, linux.

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> windows 7 is out of support

Windows 7 is not out of support. It is out of mainstream support which means Microsoft develops and releases no new features for it. Windows 7 is in Extended support until 2020, which means it continues to get security patches, which is really all anyone cares about.

Exactly. And Windows 8 will have extended support until 2023.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

Just because something is not supported anymore doesn't mean you have the right to force people to stop people using it.

Windows 7 is not out of support because it's obsolete, it's out of support because of MS commercial strategy.

Excellent point. That's the heart of the issue. Changing the terms of the relationship after they've been established. Great way to ruin trust.

This is exactly my issue with the forced upgrade. With a browser like Chrome, automatic upgrades are there from day one. Everybody expects them, and they happen silently anyway. On the other hand, Windows 7 users never signed up for forced OS upgrades when they purchased the OS. (Especially not an upgrade that downloads gigabytes of data, forces your computer offline for hours, and sometimes even bricks your computer.)

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