14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Vista received the very last updates in its history earlier today as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday, and this means that the operating system is officially discontinued as of April 11 and no other patches are planned.
Windows Vista first saw daylight in November 2006, and it quickly turned out to be Microsoft’s biggest flop in the operating system market, with users hitting crashes, issues, BSODs, and many other problems at a time when the software giant invested aggressively to upgrade its userbase from Windows XP.
Getting rid of Windows Vista is nothing more than a relief for Microsoft, especially given all these problems, but at the same time, the company is also making one major step towards its goal of focusing exclusively on Windows 10.
While discontinuing Windows Vista is not at all a difficult task, as less than 1 percent of the world’s desktop PCs are still running this OS version, Microsoft is likely to have a harder job upgrading users from Windows 7 when support comes to an end in January 2020.
Next step, Windows 7
Windows 7 is currently the number one desktop operating system worldwide and it is running on nearly 50 percent of the computers out there. Furthermore, Windows 7 has resisted Microsoft’s aggressive push for Windows 10 and the free upgrade promo, so there’s no doubt that many users would continue sticking with it despite the approaching end of support.
As far as Windows Vista is concerned, the only thing that needs to be done right now is to upgrade. Sticking with an operating system that no longer receives updates and security patches means you are exposing to unnecessary risks of being hacked, as flaws discovered by cybercriminals no longer get fixes from the company.
In most of the cases, the same vulnerabilities affect all Windows versions, so even if Windows Vista might not be necessarily targeted in future attacks, the lack of updates leaves users vulnerable and exposes their data.
Without a doubt, Windows Vista is not going to be missed, and this is probably the first time when an operating system is retired and Microsoft is more than happy with it. Hasta la Vista, baby!