Windows Vista has reached its End of Life day

[midian182]

Windows Vista, one of the most disliked versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, is being killed off today. As reported last month, April 11 marks the End of Life day for the old OS, meaning it will no longer receive any new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates from Microsoft.

Vista is still the operating system of choice for 0.72 percent of all Windows users, meaning it’s installed on around 10 – 11 million systems. By comparison, the Windows version that preceded Vista – XP – has a 7.44 percent share.

"Microsoft has provided support for Windows Vista for the past 10 years, but the time has come for us, along with our hardware and software partners, to invest our resources towards more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

Mainstream support for Vista ended on April 10, 2012, but extended support for the second service pack was left open as an option for commercial clients.

Some say Windows Vista didn’t deserve the reputation it gained, and that under-powered PCs were the cause of its performance issues. Moreover, the OS is fondly remembered as paving the way for the much-loved Windows 7.

Those who continue to use Vista after today may be vulnerable to security risks and viruses. With Internet Explorer 9 no longer supported by Vista, anyone using the browser will be at risk from additional threats. Other browsers, such as Chrome, ended Vista support long ago.

"As more software and hardware manufacturers continue to optimize for more recent versions of Windows, you can expect to encounter more apps and devices that do not work with Windows Vista," added Microsoft.

Goodbye, Vista. In three more years, it'll be Windows 7's turn.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/68895-windows-vista-has-reached-end-life-day.html

 

[Reehahs]

Even MS accidents have larger install base than desktop Linux, sad really.

 

[Greg S]

I'm guessing most of these Vista users are uninformed home users. Not a big deal that Vista is gone. I'm honestly waiting for the day that 7 is gone so that we finally get highly optimized software for Windows 10.

 

[amstech]

Looks like I will be going with Windows 9.
Not quite the dual personality mess that Windows 8 is, and not the spyware + malware OS Windows 10 turned out to be.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I'm guessing most of these Vista users are uninformed home users. Not a big deal that Vista is gone. I'm honestly waiting for the day that 7 is gone so that we finally get highly optimized software for Windows 10.

Yeah. As much beloved that 7 is, it's well past it's prime. It's now high time to move on and honestly speaking, I don't find much wrong with 10 apart from it's intrusiveness but that can mostly and easily be remedied, not even the forced updates perturb me. It's not as graphically pleasing as 7, but it is the better, more secure OS without any shadow of a doubt.

 

[gusticles41]

Some say Windows Vista didn’t deserve the reputation it gained, and that under-powered PCs were the cause of its performance issues.

I do agree with this to some extent. When Vista came out hardware was definitely behind. Single/dual core processors, 1gb of memory (the biggest bottleneck), and slowwww mechanical drives. A properly equipped machine could run Vista without too many problems...but it still was nowhere near as stable as XP/7.

 

[EClyde]

I had no problems with Vista, ever.

 

[madboyv1]

I'm guessing most of these Vista users are uninformed home users. Not a big deal that Vista is gone. I'm honestly waiting for the day that 7 is gone so that we finally get highly optimized software for Windows 10.

Yeah. As much beloved that 7 is, it's well past it's prime. It's now high time to move on and honestly speaking, I don't find much wrong with 10 apart from it's intrusiveness but that can mostly and easily be remedied, not even the forced updates perturb me. It's not as graphically pleasing as 7, but it is the better, more secure OS without any shadow of a doubt.

That was pretty much my exact stance on Windows 10 when it came out. Since then it has done me well and I haven't had any problems with it.

 

[Burty117]

It still was nowhere near as stable as XP/7.

I humbly disagree with that, it was way more stable than XP... If the hardware vendor had written drivers for Vista. Vista's launch problems with stability was primarily to do with drivers not being written properly or Vista trying to interpret XP drivers really badly (they remedied this quite a lot in Service Pack 1).

 

[mattfrompa]

Boo Vista, yeah IT Crowd!

 

[Nobina]

It was quite buggy and slow but it made Windows 7 what it is now. It got a little bit better with updates and service packs but it was still quite bad. I hope to never see Windows 7 gone until a new operating system comes out that is not intrusive and annoying as Windows 10 and 8.

 

[Rockstarrrr]

Never even tried Vista in my PC. At the point I bought more RAM, Windows 7 was at the door. Vista was and still is best looking Windows ever, from install screens to icons and everything else.

 

[nismo91]

For me, Windows Vista is not a flop. It just needs more power than xp. I remember I was dual-booting vista beta on my laptop which has pentium M 1.70ghz with just 512mb of ram, which is the minimum requirement. It was beautiful, not to mention the colored taskbar and translucent aero. It is undoubtedly slow, but when it came with my newer laptop with 2.40ghz core 2 duo and 4gb of ram a few years later, it never disappoint me. I have no desire to downgrade to xp at all.

Windows 7 then came to fix many problems along when more powerful hardware are easily available. My years of using vista was not wasted because 7 is very similar to vista in architectural level. Same cannot be said to those who detest vista and decided stay with xp for even longer.

That being said, because of the bad reputation it receives, there are very few business users currently running vista and therefore basically nobody is going to be affected by its EOL.

 

[oranuro]

I actually liked Vista a lot. Felt like a step forward from WindowsXP. I think most stayed away from it because it was well known that Vista needed better than average hardware to perform well. I saw a massive improvement once I upgraded from four gigabytes to eight gigabytes of memory. And that was with the Ultimate Edition with the added resources running in the background.

If Microsoft raised the minimum hardware specifications for OEM/Vendors I do believe home users( not enterprise/business clients )would have adopted more.

 

[davislane1]

Windows Vista, one of the most disliked versions of Microsoft’s operating systems, is being killed off today.

Windows Visa was killed off Tuesday, January 30th, 2007.

 

[Uncle Al]

Can't say that I'll miss it any more than I'd miss a root canal and yes, I've had two of them!!!

 

[oldikes]

Gotta say, asthetically windows vista is my favorite. I hate windows 8/10 asthetics. I wish they would rewrite their design language. Every UI on a microsoft product seems messy as heck to me the last few years, and people trying to mark it as progress is about as hilarious as apple selling their book for a few hundred bucks.

 

[Igrecman]

I remember the animated wallpapers, that was cool if the hardware could take it. Nowadays there is Debian and Ubuntu distros that can do that.

 

[liammac002]

"By comparison, the Windows version that followed Vista – XP – has a 7.44 percent share." Not trying to be annoying but that should be "preceded" not "followed".

 

[TomSEA]

I had no problems with Vista, but then again I've always had cutting edge machines I've built from scratch.

 

[Panda218]

I had zero issues with Vista myself, but it was hell to support when I worked at Geek Squad. I would like to blame all the consumers who thought buying the 200 dollar e-machine package was worth it...

 

[Burty117]

It was beautiful, not to mention the colored taskbar and translucent aero.

asthetically windows vista is my favorite.

Agreed, weirdly, I would prefer Microsoft went back to that design language. I'm not saying I hate Windows 10 (I did hate 8's design) but I actually preferred Vista's look over Windows 7.

 

[Ascaris]

I'm guessing most of these Vista users are uninformed home users. Not a big deal that Vista is gone. I'm honestly waiting for the day that 7 is gone so that we finally get highly optimized software for Windows 10.

Why uninformed? Vista is and has been a perfectly usable OS for years.

You might have to wait a while for 7 to be gone. Even with a perceived "good" version of Windows (7) waiting in the wings, a ton of people didn't move on from XP,. Even though its extended support ended 3 years ago, it still has more market share than all versions of MacOS/OSX combined.

When 7's support ends, there is no more perceived "good" version of Windows. For most, it will be a choice of sticking with 7 or going to 10-- and for many of us, that last one just isn't going to happen unless MS makes a major U-turn in development of 10 (which isn't likely). There's a lifeline in Windows 8, but it's been so maligned that a lot of people haven't given it a second thought for years.

Despite all its faults, 8.1 can be modified to be a pretty decent OS, with only the slightest traces of the 'app' nonsense. No tiles anywhere in sight... no charms, no apps, no Windows Store. It turns out that the bizarre dual-mode interface had a plus side-- it's relatively easy to wall off the "app" portion and live in the "desktop" half, which is actually pretty decent once you banish the ribbon with one of the aftermarket tools like Old New Explorer.

Compared to 10, there's no Cortana, updates I control, no telemetry, nothing being installed or uninstalled unless I want it to be, no changing my settings on its own, and pretty much the same kernel as 10. I'm set until 2023.

Of course, I could move completely to Linux right now, as I have it set to dual-boot with 8.1, but there are still things that bind me to Windows for now. No reason to move on completely now... six years is a really long time in computers, and I don't even know if MS will be relevant to me by then. Time will tell... but I am sure of one thing: if 10's anything like it is now, it is not an option.

 

[merikafyeah]

For about 80% of common desktop PC use cases, Windows XP is still perfectly usable. Until this is no longer fact, I am completely certain Windows 7 will last decades more.

 

[J spot]

Windows Vista wasn't bad, particularly after the first service pack. I originally got it right before that first service pack. The major problems that it had was the limited drivers available for hardware. Compare that to Windows XP which had been around for such a long time, and also the introduction to 64 Bit. Vista plus time helped Windows 7 a lot in preventing such problems.