In an update of policy, Microsoft has decided to extend support for Windows 7 and 8.1 machines with Skylake CPUs until 2018. It seems the company has given in to demands by Lenovo, which is currently the biggest PC maker.
In January Microsoft made the announcement that it would end support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 with Skylake, Intel's 6th-gen processors, after July 17, 2017.
Just some days ago, Lenovo had made the news by criticizing Microsoft, accusing the company of “just pushing customers to move to Windows 10.” Lenovo also said that it was getting a lot of customer feedback, asking the hardware maker to “influence Microsoft” and “try to get them to prolong support on that.”
It seems that finally Lenovo and maybe other PC makers have been successful in convincing Microsoft about Skylake support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Jeremy Korst, a general manager of Windows Product Marketing has posted an update to the existing Skylake support policy on the company's blog.
“As we approached Intel's Business Launch for Skylake in mid-January, we shared more details on our recommendations for enterprise customers on Windows 10, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, including clarifications to our support policy for new silicon. A key part of this update was our commitment to continuing to lead with a customer-first approach. Since then we've received feedback from customers at various stages of planning and deployment of Windows 10. Led by their feedback, today we are sharing a few updates to our Skylake support policy*:
- To help provide greater flexibility for customers who have longer deployment timeframes to Windows 10, the support period for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 devices on Skylake systems will be extended by one year: from July 17, 2017 to July 17, 2018.
- Also, after July 2018, all critical Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 security updates will be addressed for Skylake systems until extended support ends for Windows 7, January 14, 2020 and Windows 8.1 on January 10, 2023.”
The blog post also highlights the benefits that customers can get by upgrading their machines to Windows 10, stating again that the combination of modern hardware and software “enables up to 30x better graphics and 3x the battery life” compared to Windows 7 PCs and “with the unmatched security of Credential Guard utilizing silicon supported virtualization.”
Source: Microsoft