#WeekendWisdom 011 Windows 7 End of Life
Welcome to #WeekendWisdom number 11. This week we’re going to talk about Windows 7 End of Life.
What’s happening?
On Tuesday the 14th of January 2020, Microsoft issued the last set of security patches for the Windows 7 Operating System. This is not some kind of Armageddon event. The world will not end because of this. But just from that point onwards, if you continue to use the Windows 7 Operating System, you’re at an increasing risk of being compromised going into the future.
Can we upgrade?
You could try to upgrade your computer to Windows 10, maybe even possibly for free. But if your hardware is incompatible with Windows 10 you will get rolled back to Windows 7.
Can we spend money to fix this problem?
You can pay Microsoft for continuing extended support for Windows 7, to get security patches for the next few years. That will cost something like $60 or $70 per year, per PC, for the first year. That price will probably double next year and again in year 3. It does also take some bit of setup to get that put in place.
I don’t care about Windows 7 End of Life. I’m going to use it anyway.
But if you really do have to continue to use a Windows 7 machine, you should try to restrict what you are using it for. Don’t do normal day-to-day banking or web browsing things like that. As I say you are at increasing risks and if possible, we talked about network segmentation two weeks ago, any Windows 7 machines should really be separated from the rest of your hardware estate.
So that’s it for this week. Let’s be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.