Microsoft confirms new Windows 7 monthly charge for updates | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft confirms new Windows 7 monthly charge for updates

forbes.com

61 pointsrustcharm58 comments

This isn't really news. Microsoft has long offered extended support to enterprises with volume license agreements. For Windows XP, Microsoft called this "custom support".[1]

Windows XP custom support was billed annually. It may be news if Microsoft switch to monthly billing for Windows 7, but the blog post[2] linked in the Forbes article does not mention monthly billing.

[1] https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/kdean/2014/01/12/windows...

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2018/09/0...

This reminds me that Windows Server 2003 custom support at one point tends to be mentioned in every quarterly earnings statement of MS.

Reminder: forbes.com/sites/* isn't the same as a forbes.com article. It's essentially a blogging network that just so happens to use the Forbes domain.

Seems like a terrible branding move

I want this for Android. I want to pay every month for updates so I get them quickly, and so I don't have to chuck my phone.

The problem with Android is that it doesn't work like Windows does - it's dependent on support from the manufacturer which means that even if your phone was capable of running a later version of Android, if the manufacturer hasn't upgraded their blobs, it wouldn't work anyway. Pity, as I agree with you otherwise (my G5 Plus is still stuck on 7, despite Motorola saying they would provide an upgrade to 8 over a year ago).

This was true before project treble. Nowadays blob are separated form OS version. It makes not only updating but porting different flavors of android much easier. But manufacturer had to implement treble first.

use Lineage OS custom rom, which provides updates all the time.

I used to flash CM on my phines since having HTC desire (2010), later on i was choosing popular phones with CM support. Samsung, HTC, nexus, but its been years since i flashed some stable release. Now i am on galaxy s7 edge. Few months i was no longer able to automatically pull nightly update from linage. Wiki said that it was no longer supported. They brought support back, but it showed me that I can't relay on it without compiling by myself... I went back to stock rom and I am happy with that. Everything just works (eg phobe is not rebooting on incomming call while comnected to bt speaker), lots of cool UI stuff (while custom roms were meant to have more of them). If manufacturer will drop support then i will change phone.

Any Android One phone gives you that. E.g. Nokia 6.1 receives monthly updates.

AOSP is the way to go here.

I want to highlight that it's not for the current Windows version but for the old Windows 7 which is closing its end of life.

More importantly, the charge only happens after Windows 7 has reached end of life.

They did the same thing with XP, and any enterprise software company does this for end of life software. If you want support on an EOL product, it's not free.

The article jumps to conclusions -> saying this will cause problems with Windows 10, which is not yet EOL. This article is more or less flamebait.

Correct me if I'm wrong, from my limited experience in the enterprise software space, if you want support for current / still under active development version, that also isn't free. Updates can also come at a cost.

Windows 10 updates are free.

And security updates for Windows 7 are also free until it’s EOL.

Imagine that XP and Win7 where spun off to different companies and allowed to compete with Win10.

Would customers pay to install Windows 7 on new hardware? It is still available from some OEMs via downgrade rights for Windows 10.

Sure, but if your CPU is new enough it will disable Windows Update to entice you to use 10

Corporate customers would stick with XP and/or 7 if they could.

A fragmented market where those companies start making user requested enhancements that for the Win32 API and make development a nightmare?

Maybe this means we can finally avoid the automatic updates at bad times by simply not authorizing payments?

A friend of mine found a helpful workaround for this.

Apparently if you go into your network settings and toggle the flag that says your internet connection is a metered connection then Windows won't auto-download any updates at all. That's for Windows 10, I don't know if the same is true for Windows 7.

...or simply stop "Windows Updates" service. Problem with your solution is that whenever you connect to a new WiFi connection, you need to mark it as a metered connection. Otherwise it won't be treated as a metered connection.

It might still choose that it is important enough that it overrides you.

A better solution would be to block the update servers in your router.

Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180909080100/https://www.forbe...

It's enough to switch off JS. It works for 99% of similar nags BTW.

It isn't for me. I get redirected to https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com... , which shows empty. :-/

You need to switch it off before redirect, i.e. before clicking the link.

I have it disabled all the time. It doesn't help.

The redirect is done by the server, before it had a chance to learn if the client supports JS or not:

  $ wget --max-redirect=0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/09/08/microsoft-windows-7-monthly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost/
  --2018-09-09 19:07:58--  https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/09/08/microsoft-windows-7-monthly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost/
  Resolving www.forbes.com (www.forbes.com)... 151.101.114.49
  Connecting to www.forbes.com (www.forbes.com)|151.101.114.49|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
  Location: https://www.forbes.com/consent/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/09/08/microsoft-windows-7-monthly-charge-windows-10-free-upgrade-cost/ [following]
  0 redirections exceeded.

That's very interesting. For me the behavior is 100% consistent. Paste the URL in the address bar with JS enabled - get a blank page. Paste it with JS disabled - get straight to the destination.

Whatever happened to ReactOS? We don't hear much about it these days. But it seems like Linux + Wine/ReactOS is becoming more and more efficient in the enterprise in terms of admin headaches.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17596501

It's coming along quite well from what I gather. I seem to see it popup on HN every month or so with some impressive updates

A very misleading headline indeed.

So I'm confused, the rumors of Microsoft considering Windows 10 monthly fees were false, or was that something else? This seems to be extended support fee (past 2020 for Windows 7), which seems reasonable.

Win 10 fees will probably come in the future, after these upcoming Win 7 fees have caused a decent percentage of current users to "upgrade" to 10. </cynic>

> while Windows 7 users have long been able to laugh at the ongoing problems of Windows 10 users, it now appears it will be those users who upgraded for free who will get the last laugh…

This semi-serious statement is based on the assumption that the cost of "ongoing problems" for Windows 10 users is lower than $139.

Time to switch Linux?

Go ask Ubuntu, updates for LTS12 for free, you will undertand a good deal about this article.

The contemporary Ubuntu LTS release at Windows 7 GA (2009) was 8.04.

New Ubuntu releases are also free of charge. There is less cost to upgrade.

For big companies the real cost of an upgrade is not the new license.

Ubuntu LTS isn't really the appropriate distro if we're trying to cut down the frequency of major upgrades. RHEL/CentOS is what we should be talking about if we're going like-for-like.

Perhaps in 2018 it's a good reminder how having a monopoly is often not great for consumers.

How long ago was Windows 7 released? How long should they continue supporting it at no extra cost?

I’m sure blackhats will be rubbing their hands in glee when this day comes.

I was going to make some snide comment about black hats being excited to pwn 1% of computers or whatever W7's current market share is. Then I went and looked it up. netmarketshare.com thinks it's still above 40%, with minimal movement over the last two years. Shows what I know.

FWIW I've done some limited consulting work with senior citizens. Two observations: A) they like their systems the way they are, so changes of any kind (especially to the UI) are upsetting/unpleasant experiences, B) they are on fixed incomes so hardware/software upgrades that cost more than some de minimis amount are put off / ignored. My prediction - this cohort is going to get slammed at that EOL date.

The people who don't replace their Windows 7 probably don't care about security. Furthermore I don't don't know any Linux distributions to guarantee support for more than 10 years without cost. And Apple/Google seem to take an even worse stance.

chromeos in particular is a mixed bag. Great for security (not privacy though) while supported, but only supported for about 5 years. This is for x86 hardware, where traditional distros will support them almost infinitely. Only 32-bit hardware is slowly getting deprecated, but any x86-64 hardware that you can get your hands on is still supported by all linux distros.

But the people hit by the huge botnets of unpatched Win 7 machines care.

If they cared they will pay for support or switch to Win 10 or switch to another OS (but which one gives >10 years of free updates?)

Companies who don't want to get DDOS'd should pay randos on the Internet to update their computers?

They have many choices including paying randos.

It's rather problematic that they decide to end the updates at the same time they decided to make updating windows 10 not free and windows 8 no longer available. They're essentially forcing people to upgrade, and of course, customers are forced to buy a product or be subjected to security risk. And of course, there is no competition that can take advantage of this decision.

That tidbit was at the end of the article, but I don't expect employees of microsoft to care.

Microsoft OS were never free to start with is it shocking that this update also costs money like almost every new version of windows ever?

They did the same thing when XP went EOL why would you expect it to be any different for Win 7

This is for Windows 7 which is like 10 years old - give them a break.

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