14 DAY TRIAL // Support for Skylake processors on Windows 7 and 8.1 will end on July 17, 2017, but Lenovo says that some of its customers are already asking the company to get in touch with Microsoft and convince them to give up on this plan.
The reason is as simple as it could be: not everyone is willing to move to Windows 10, so Lenovo’s customers who purchased devices powered by Skylake processors want to continue using Windows 7 and 8.1 beyond this date, but at the same time to also receive updates.
Adrienne Mueller, North America ThinkPad sales enablement and product manager at Lenovo, explained recently some customers “haven’t thought about transition to Windows 10” and that’s why they are asking the company to contact Microsoft and work together on a new end of support date for Skylake on these two Windows versions.
"The thought here is that Microsoft is really just pushing customers to move to Windows 10. A lot of reactions from our customers...is can we influence Microsoft and tell them they're not ready to transition and try to get them to prolong support on that? We've tried, and Microsoft's not really willing to do that,” she was quoted as saying by Channelnomics.
Growing demand for Haswell and Broadwell
Clearly, Microsoft wants everyone to move to Windows 10, but Lenovo says that while that indeed makes sense for some, it doesn’t in the case of customers who don’t want to upgrade. Microsoft will continue to support Broadwell and Haswell until 2020, but Lenovo says that supplies here are limited and it’s banking on Skylake right now and “that wasn’t in our plan to continue to carry that.”
“This is really important because traditionally, Microsoft has supported their product for many years, and this is kind of a shorter window for customers, especially because a lot of our customers are still using Windows 7. They haven't even thought about transition to Windows 10,” the Lenovo official continued.
Microsoft’s plan to pull the plug on Skylake on Windows 7 and 8.1 systems is part of the company’s attempt to bring Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by 2017 and it’s very unlikely to see the software giant giving up on this. Most likely, the July 2017 date will be maintained and everyone will have to move to Windows 10 eventually.