Home Forums Windows 7 Pro support extended for a price

Well, things conspired this summer so that I did not get my Windows 7 machines updated. I started to think about this again last night when I found this, Microsoft has relented and will allow Win 7 Pro users to buy support for up to 3 years :

Extended support for Win 7 Pro

Pricing

Donna, Donna, Donna... we need to talk! Why spend all that money? It is probably no more to upgrade to 10.

Upgrading is painful... I have a Windows 7 system working flawlessly with older programs and older peripherals. I am happy to pay for extended security updates to buy a bit of time to figure out my long term plan.

But windows 10 is free and is supported for free.
Have a look at this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdNL-pvvXH4

The only painful part is it takes time to install.

Think of someone who is an admin for a business with 1,000 computers. Big change.

Donna, one of the nice things about the SSDs. Say, you are using a 120GB SSD. Just pop a new one in and install 10. You can always dual boot. Or just leave it in. I almost never reformat. This way, I can go back in a minute. Sure, you could have done that with the old HDDs, but they were bulky and became corrupted over time. The SSDs, can just be velcroed to the computer. I used to take them out and label them and the PC, etc. But, I figure why not just leave it in, so I always know that SSD went with that computer.

It is funny. XP was the best Microsoft ever made. Then Windows 7 was even better. Then came Vista and Windows 8. Yuk! Then, came Windows 10. It would have been an instant hit if it weren't for the ridiculous new Start menu and GUI, etc. Now that this has been fixed, it is probably the best yet. And, I hope they just keep upgrading it and leave it Win 10.

There's a part of me that wants to pay for an extra year so I don't have to deal with this right now. BUT, I have to buy one new computer for an additional hire and I don't want to have one person on Windows 10 and everyone else on Windows 7. So upgrading I am. Besides, the desktops in our office are the same ones I bought when we opened - 10 years ago. They have certainly served us well.

Or possibly a better idea. I think you are as OCD as I am, lol. I mean not wanting one Windows 10 and the rest Win 7.

Rather than make the entire switch at one time and walk into the office with all sorts of small and big issues you didn't foresee (a driver here, a scanner not connecting there), why not go ahead and add that one computer with Windows 10 and see if there are any issues.

Say, one thing doesn't work (even AC). Or it doesn't have a connection for HDMI. This way you will see all the issues and anticipate them on the others.

I am not sure how much the following has changed, but one thing with Windows 10 is the auto-updates. No big deal. Except, someone reboots their computer and there happens to be a huge update. It will reboot, but install the update, and there is nothing you can do but wait. Usually only five to ten minutes, but I have had some that last thirty minutes. So, I schedule them.

Just a thought.

For those curious about the Windows 7 ESU year-by-year price-plan, unofficial rumor suggests $50-$100-$200 per Windows 7 Pro machine for three years, subject to change:

Licenses
ESU licenses are only available to users of Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, and Windows 7 Enterprise. There are also available licenses for educational institutions using the Windows 7 Education edition.

Support for these versions of Windows 7 is on a per-device basis, meaning the more machines you need to support, the more expensive the ESU program will be. For the first year, ESU licenses start at $50 per machine for Professional and Ultimate users, and $25 per machine for Enterprise users. These costs double to $100 and $50 respectively in Year 2, and double again to $200 and $100 per machine in Year 3. These costs also include continuing support for Office 365 ProPlus, allowing Windows 7 machines covered by the ESU program to continue to run Office 365 apps.

https://www.agileit.com/news/purchase-windows-7-extended-security-updates-business/

(Windows 7 Home users are out of luck.)

Yes, I don't want to deal with upgrading right now, kicking the can down the road. Since I only have 3 computers in the office, write a check for $150 = 1 minute, for the first year, versus the time and aggravation of problems encountered when upgrading.

Just want to say that I updated 3 desktops from 7pro to 10 pro with little incident. I was surprised since they are old computers that were running slowly. Staff report a definite increase in speed. I pulled a free Windows 10 download from the internet. I'm more concerned about choosing 2 new laptops since mine are working but out of warranty x 2 yrs. Anyway, I would recommend at least try to upgrade 1 of your computers and see how it goes before paying for the extended support. Good luck!

In case a Windows 7 to Windows 10 in-place upgrade goes wrong . . .

One just failed after half an hour, claiming that the computer could not be upgraded, 0xc1900201, a typically useless Microsoft error code that eventually turned out to mean that the motherboard wasn't up to snuff.

Yet eight identical computers had upgraded without trouble.

In fact, the system in question immediately booted and ran Windows 10 off a Strelec bootable USB.

More digging revealed that a coy little (nx) lurking elsewhere on the failure screen was supposed to mean that the NX bios function was absent.

The Dell bios calls the NX function XD, just to confuse things. And it was set correctly. (NX and XD mean Not-eXecute and eXecute-Disable, the same thing.)

All the recommended solutions failed, from sfc and dism to deleting datastore and catroot2, as well as others (hardly surprising).

What fixed it was booting the Windows 7 system and then running a Windows 7 repair/upgrade from a Microsoft Windows 7 install USB, which is often the only way to fix Windows update problems. (Think of it as upgrading from a corrupt Windows 7 installation to a working Windows 7 installation.)