Tomorrow marks the first major milestone for the end of Windows 7. It reaches End of Mainstream Support, which means that it will not longer receive no-charge phone support, or new features being added.

This is not as big a deal as it sounds. Certainly not as big as the complete end of support that occcurred for Windows XP in April of 2014. For the majority of users this will make little or no difference as they will still receive security updates and bug fixes and paid phone support until 2020, as the product has now entered Extended Support.

Looking at the below table from Microsoft, the oft-maligned Vista still has over two years of extended support.

With a few years before Windows 8 hits the same milestone, Microsoft will be glad to use this opportunity to highlight the excellent new features of Windows 10 next week. It will help IT Departments the world over to start planning and getting excited for Windows 10 and how it is a much easier sell to users than Windows 8.

Source: Microsoft