14 DAY TRIAL // January 12, 2016, is quite a big day for Microsoft, not only because some new products could be launched today (spoiler alert: it’s Windows 10 Mobile) but also as a result of the fact that the company’s pulling the plug on two projects that have been around for a while.
Both Windows 8 and some old Internet Explorer versions will go dark later today, when the Redmond-based software giant will officially release the very last patches for them.
Afterwards, if you continue running any of them, you should not only start seeing notifications to update but you can also become vulnerable to attacks as Microsoft will no longer release any security patches or fixes for the vulnerabilities it finds.
Windows 8 users
In this case, the solution is pretty simple. If you’re still running Windows 8 right now, just fire up the store, download and install Windows 8.1., and you’re good to do.
Windows 8.1 is offered as a free update for Windows 8 users and brings improvements such as a Start button and multiple refinements that are supposed to fix the many annoyances of the core operating system.
Microsoft considers Windows 8.1 a service pack for Windows 8, and this is why the company is now pulling the plug on the operating system. Support for Windows 8.1 will continue to be offered beyond today.
Internet Explorer users
Starting today, all Internet Explorer versions except for 11 will go dark and will no longer receive updates and security patches. Given the fact that Internet Explorer has always been one of the most vulnerable pieces of software out there, we all know how critical it is for users to remain secure, so we have two different options.
We can either update to Internet Explorer 11 (that’s only possible on Windows 7, Windows 8 users updating to 8.1 get IE11 automatically, while Vista will continue to receive support for the current version of the browser), or switch to a different browser.
Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera are all working fine on pretty much every version of Windows out there that still has support.