Sweet penny! As we, hopefully, all know by now, Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 7 next year. One of the world’s most popular OS will reach end of support less than a year from now.
January 14, 2020, to be exact.
Microsoft is currently engaged in a drive to move users away from this old platform and onto newer, supported versions of the operating system. Windows 10, preferably. Obviously, not everyone is able to make the jump right away — particularly enterprise users.
To that end, the company announced back in September that businesses will be able to pay for what it calls Extended Security Updates (ESUs), until they are ready to upgrade to Windows 10. These will be available for three years, in order to keep these systems safe from vulnerabilities and security issues.
This isn’t exactly new, as Microsoft has long offered ESUs to customers that are willing to pay for them. What we did not know was how much will these special patches cost.
Until today, that is.
Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reports that the company has been briefing its partners and salespeople about its plans for Windows 7 ESUs recently.
And apparently, the cost for Windows 7 Pro users is $50 per device for the first year, doubling for each of the next two years. Meaning, these users will pay $200 for the third year. Windows Enterprise volume licensing or Microsoft 365 customers will pay half of that, though.
As you can imagine, this can quickly add up to a lot for users and companies that have their machines on Windows 7 still, and aren’t ready to upgrade for one reason or another.
Even if a customer opts into this a year down the line, they will still have to pay for the first year.
Unfortunately, this is not for consumers. You can’t go and pay Microsoft $50 for an additional year of support. This deal is only for educational and enterprise customers, understandably.
No official confirmation from Microsoft on this, either. But keeping in mind that this comes from one of the most reliable of sources around, it sure looks to be the plan.
Speaking of plans, luckily, you still have about a whole year to plan your upgrade to a newer, supported version of Windows. These prices aren’t for everybody, even if you are a small setup and want to keep running the old operating system on your business devices for a few years yet.
It’s clear that Redmond would rather have you move to Windows 10.
And the hundreds of millions alongside.
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