Microsoft will no longer support Windows 7. What’s that mean for its users?

The full-screen warning was not the thing you needed to see on your computer in the midst of a week already made stressful by predictions of impending doom via snow, hail, ice and wind.

But there was no avoiding it. The warning was the first thing that appeared when the computer booted up and sang its little “I’m awake” ditty:

“Your Windows 7 PC is out of support. As of Jan. 14, 2020, support for Windows 7 has come to an end. Your PC is more vulnerable to viruses and malware due to: No security updates, No software updates, No tech support.”

It’s not like Microsoft hadn’t warned us this day was coming. And, as operating systems go, Windows 7 is getting a little long in the tooth, having been released in 2009.

No doubt switching to a new operating system, in this case Windows 10, will mean some improvement in performance, some new features and an end to some of the quirks and signs of age that have accumulated in Windows 7 over the years (like those system updates that supposedly download at sign-out, but never seem to install).

Except that a computer configured to run Windows 7 might not be powerful enough to handle Windows 10. Advises the warning message, “Microsoft strongly recommends using Windows 10 on a new PC for latest security features and protection against malicious software.”

Well of course they would. Whether purchased directly (Microsoft lists the Windows 10 Home download from its website at $139) or bundled with a new desktop or laptop, each new copy of the operating software sold means a nice little pop in revenue at relatively little marginal cost.

But there’s considerable cost to the consumer or business now asked to buy a new operating system and a new computer to wrap around it, and the spending doesn’t end there.

You’ll need updated versions of your applications programs like Office. Then there’s the time and hassle of migrating files to the new machine, in reconfiguring stuff like browsers and bookmarks, in figuring out where Microsoft hid certain favorite features this time, or what combination of finger gymnastics is now required to perform certain tasks that you’ve done a different way for the last decade. For business, that means time, expense, lost productivity and some frustration as everyone relearns how to operate a PC.

To gain … what exactly?

If the supposedly antiquated operating system still gets the job done, why dump it? If what the computer you’ve got gets the job done, why not stick with it? Throwing a functioning set of hardware and software out is a little like getting rid of an older car that’s running well but could use a new set of tires, or demolishing a house because one of the shower drain pipes is clogged. The jump from Win7 to Win10 does not represent the revolutionary leap in technology that the jump from DOS to Windows 3.0 did.

No wonder, then, that as the tech publication VentureBeat reports, “Windows 7 is the Microsoft operating system that millions do not want to upgrade. Just like Windows XP users, who shunned Windows Vista, Windows 7 users shunned Windows 8. Only once Windows 10 showed up did the real upgrade cycle begin, helping sell PCs along the way. And in another similarity to Windows XP, even though most consumers have moved to Windows 10, many businesses still cling to Windows 7.”

Statcounter reports that while Windows 10 had 65 percent of the worldwide market for desktop Windows PCs at the end of 2019, Windows 7 still had a healthy 27 percent (there were still machines running Win8, WinXP and Vista).

It would probably hold on a few more years, with attrition of old machines slowly whittling away the share, were it not for Microsoft forcefully shoving users out the door of Win7.

This is not the first time, and it won’t be the last, that consumers and businesses will be pushed to abandon technology they’re still comfortable using.

Sometimes there’s a compelling reason to make the switch.

Ask TV viewers, having seen the wonders of sports or movies on big, flat, high-definition sets if they’d like to go back to the days of watching video-cassette tapes on a “huge” 19-inch screen powered by a bulky cathode-ray tube. Not many smart-phone users would want to swap their mobile devices, combining a computer, a camera, a music-and-video player and a communications tool (capable of voice or text) into one handheld unit, for the one-task cell-phone considered revolutionary three decades ago.

In those instances consumers and businesses will happily spend the money (with later adopters getting the advantage of declining prices). But if the latest and greatest isn’t all that much greater than what they’re already using (and have paid for) now, they’ll put off making a switch until they absolutely have to.

Which, given Microsoft’s ending of support, is where we are today.

We laggards and procrastinators will try to cram Win10 into the machines we’ve got (hey, why should I replace it? All the keys are still attached!) or succumb to the pressure and buy new. We will grumble and kvetch, but eventually we spend the money and try to beat Win10 into something that is familiar and works for us.

And we will hope to accomplish this before Microsoft decides it’s bored with Win10 and it’s time to extract more money from us.

This story was originally published January 18, 2020 at 7:00 AM.