It has been well publicised but Microsoft are withdrawing support for Windows 7 on 14th January 2020. After this period, Windows 7 users will no longer receive security updates or will be able to get technical support from Microsoft.
Windows 7 machines will not stop working on 14th January but if you continue to use Windows 7 after support has ended, it will become more vulnerable to security risks and viruses. Your PC will continue to start and run, but you will no longer received software updates, including security updates, from Microsoft.
Support for Internet Explorer on a Windows 7 device will also be discontinued on January 14, 2020. As a component of Windows, Internet Explorer follows the support lifecycle of the Windows operating system it’s installed on.
What options do I have?
1. Replace your current machine with a new Windows 10 machine
2. Upgrade your Windows 7 machine to Windows 10
3. Do nothing but understand the risks of unsupported software
While option 3 has no immediate cost, the long-term cost if you are subject to a data leak or support issue could be excessive.
Option 2 has a lower cost but you will need to consider if you would need memory and hard drive upgrades as well to support the running of the latest Windows versions. Even once this investment has been made, the base chassis of the machine will still be old and subject to failure due to age.
Based on this, our recommendation is to replace the machine. This would probably have the lowest cost/exposure over a period of time and improve system performance and reliability for the users.
