Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Microsoft ends support for Windows 8

Today, Redmond-based Microsoft announced that they would no-longer send out security updates for their Windows 8 operating system and several version of their Internet Explorer (IE) browser. This means that if you still use Windows Vista or Windows 7 you will be fine since they are still being supported. If you are in the minority that use Windows 8 you will need to go to the Windows store and get either the free Windows 8.1 or the free Windows 10 updates. As for the IE browser you will need to upgrade to either IE 11 or the Edge browser that comes with Windows 10.
It sounds straightforward enough but it get slightly complex if you are running either Windows Vista or Windows Server 2012. Since Windows Vista can not run any version of IE above 9 you will still be able to get updates for IE 9 until Windows Vista is set to be retired sometime next year. If you run Windows Server 2012 you will still be able to get updates for IE 10 since it is the highest compatible version for the operating system.
Back on Oct 25, 2012 Redmond-based Microsoft released Windows 8. The new operating system radically changed the look and feel of previous versions of Windows. Gone from this new system were many of the features that people have become use to seeing when they would power up their desktop or laptop. Since it looked and felt so much different this meant that to update to Windows 8 was going to required plenty of retraining that they just did not want to do. For this reason many opted to stay with either Windows Vista or Windows 7.

In Oct 2013 Microsoft released Windows 8.1 update or as it now being called service pack 1. Windows 8.1 brought back some of the features that were left out of Windows 8. Windows 8.1 did get more people to upgrade from the previous versions of Windows but there were still plenty of holdouts that opted to stay with both Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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