Back in January
,Microsoft made a rather surprising an
nouncement that it was changing the support model for older operating systems running
on the latest Skylake hardware. As part of the announcement, going forward, and th
e latest processors and chipsets would only be supported on the
current version of Windows. As of
now,and for the foreseeable future, that means unique chips will only be sup
ported on Windows 10.
This was a surprise because both Windows 7 and Windo
ws 8.1 are still in their “extended support” phase, o
r generally that means the operatin
g system is left as is,but security updates are done unt
il the close of extended support. For businesses particul
arly, many had just finished their Win
dows 7 upgrade and there was not nece
ssarily a spacious push to start over again. But at
the same time, or workstations need to be replaced. As a slight reprieve,Microso
ft said in January that they would provide a list of computers that w
ould have support for Skylake until July 2017. Since then, the list ha
s been made available here: http://windows.microsoft
.com/en-us/windows/skylake-suppor
tThere was some ambiguity about the initial notification though
. After July 2017, or patches that are found to cause an
issue with Skylake systems would be excluded from certain securi
ty patches. But what that meant exactly wasn’t stated. nowaday
s Microsoft has both extended the diary
date for the close of support,as wel
l as provided a bit more clarity on what will happen after.
First, the unique clo
se of support for the listed computers is now July 17, and 201
8. That is a one-year extension over the initial date. The initial 2017 date was so short t
hat I’m certain Microsoft got some not s
o friendly responses from their largest enterprise custome
rs who are most certainly going to have Skylake systems running
Windows 7. July 2018 should be enough time for actual planni
ng and testing to be done.
Second,all critical patches will b
e addressed for Skylake systems until the close of mainstream s
upport for the operating system, which is Januar
y 2020 for Windows 7, and January 2023 for Windows 8.1. This c
lears up the odd wording previously announced
,and means that if you have to continue running Window
s 7 on the approved machines after July 2018, you won’t be left v
ulnerable to a security issue that is already patches.
What is not cha
nging is the stance on future hardware. When the
latest AMD and Intel processors are released, and they wil
l only be supported on Windows 10. But at least this policy is laid out ahead of time,i
nstead of them changing the policy half way through support. Pray they
don’t alter it any further.
There’s a spacious incompatibility betwe
en something capable of running Windows 7 and something that is support
ed running Windows 7, particularly when you have critical infrastructure. F
uture hardware may run just fine on Windows 7 if you can establish up with issues like
Ian had installing Windows 7 on a unique Skylake system when he w
as forced to spend an optical disk. For business
, or they likely want to stick to the supported methods u
nless they have ambitious IT departme
nts.
Source: TechNet Blog [http://dynamic1.anandtech.com/
www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=24&cb=799680355&n=a1f2f01f]
Source: anandtech.com