It's official, I now hate Microsoft and windows

I have used Windows for too many years to count. Seen it grow from a dos extension to replace the whole OS. I really liked NT when it came out as compared to every other option at the time is was golden. Skipped the Win95-me completely. Perhaps that is my downfall. I have become so accustomed to the way that it works, when they force drastic major changes that hamper or eliminate the way that I have become accustomed to do things then I get frustrated.

Some times these things take a dramatic step backwards in functionality for the end user that it makes the OS appear unusable. I gave the technical tryout of Win10 a try and it lasted about 3 hours in a VM for me before I concluded that it just isn't worth my while.

Sorry microsoft, but I think I will stick with my Windows 7 running in a VM now on my Mac.

PeteD wrote in post #17363353
As for the Win7, microsoft told me tonight it would not continue to support it much longer. If it is wrong, they are the ones that stated it.

Mainstream support for Windows 7 ends 13 January 2015. Extended support (security updates and help desk for a fee) ends 14 January 2020.

Microsoft quit issuing any updates for XP on 8 April 2014 (except that there were some extensions granted when it was found that many financial institutions had ATMs running Windows XP and several U.S. Government agencies hadn't bothered to upgrade/update their systems).

Mainstream support for Windows 8 and 8.1 will end 9 January, 2018 and extended support on 10 January 2023.

RHChan84 wrote in post #17368135
I meant it as new changes to see how the public likes it. Not named "beta" but MS's intentions to see how the public responds to it.

It's a little too late to see how public responds to it when the software is ready to be released. The decision to make significant changes has been done by MS bigshots long before any software is ready for beta. They care about what shareholders say and not the public.

Ancient Mariner wrote in post #17368998
Mainstream support for Windows 7 ends 13 January 2015. Extended support (security updates and help desk for a fee) ends 14 January 2020.

Microsoft quit issuing any updates for XP on 8 April 2014 (except that there were some extensions granted when it was found that many financial institutions had ATMs running Windows XP and several U.S. Government agencies hadn't bothered to upgrade/update their systems).

Mainstream support for Windows 8 and 8.1 will end 9 January, 2018 and extended support on 10 January 2023.

Until mid last year I've worked for 10+ years in an international investment bank. That bank was the first on Wall Street to fully migrate all desktops & laptops to Windows 7. All other banks were early into their migrations and still had thousands of users to go thru. The problem is that large corporations invest money into custom in house applications that are hard to migrate to other systems. For example the same bank was still running IE 8 and still testing (only in beta for select users) of IE 10 in 2014. In 2011 everyone was still using IE 6 and this was all because Intranet applications would only work in IE6 and not newer browsers.

Ancient Mariner wrote in post #17368998
Mainstream support for Windows 7 ends 13 January 2015. Extended support (security updates and help desk for a fee) ends 14 January 2020.

That is very interesting considering that Microsoft agreed last year to allow major manufacturers to continue selling new machines with Windows7 installed. I think they must have changed the mainstream support, or be offering support still to their OEM's as part of that deal.

mjmackinnon wrote in post #17369618
That is very interesting considering that Microsoft agreed last year to allow major manufacturers to continue selling new machines with Windows7 installed. I think they must have changed the mainstream support, or be offering support still to their OEM's as part of that deal.

http://windows.microso​ft.com/en-ca/windows/lifecycle and what that means http://support2.micros​oft.com/lifecycle/

Microsoft hasn't changed the schedule, mainstream support for Win 7 SP1 is scheduled to end next Tuesday.

PeteD wrote in post #17363357
The one thing that bothers me more than anything about the whole mess is, they are forcing me to upgrade.

THe same thing happened with XP. I don't remember if it was SP2 or SP3, but one of them was "required" by Microsoft or future updates would not load. It is basically their way of saying "This is important, so you must do it." The update to Win 8.1 is more than just some new features.

gmm213 wrote in post #17367965
When I used to be in the field it usually was because it's not worth upgrading every time. Look at systems. 98 was good, ME was crap, Xp was good, vista was crap, 7 is good. Why upgrade from a good system to one that's usually bloated and junky.

As you know from being "in the field", the proper sequence for business was NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8

Therefore, you would have had to skip Windows 2000 and make the jump from NT4 to XP, which isn't really what happened for most businesses. It is only recently that businesses skipped releases and that is primarily because Vista completely changed the user interface so it wasn't cost effective to retrain everybody.

Didn't know there was a proper sequence. I worked for a company that set up and maintained small businesses so we got more options to what we set up. NT 4 was being phased out when I started. We installed 98 mostly. We did do 2000 for a while but started with xp as soon as it was released, we rarely did servers. Completely skipped vista and that's when I stopped doing work professionally.

nqjudo wrote in post #17363258
Ask anyone you know who runs Yosemite to create a bootable install partition for you on a USB drive. No credit card required. Problem solved.

http://thevacationgals​.com …semite-Falls-nps.gov_.jpg