Microsoft pulls plug on Windows 7 and 8.1

Tech giant Microsoft recently announced in its website that it will stop providing new licenses for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 8.1 to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). After ending retail sales of the Operating Systems to consumers in 2014, this "End of Sales" officially ends the run for Windows 7 and 8.

Technically, this means that companies like Dell, which manufacture computers, would not be getting new licenses for Windows 7 and 8 anymore, though it could still use the ones they currently have in stock. All future devices would come with Windows 10 pre-installed, and the "downgrade rights", which gave consumers an opportunity to revert to an older OS, would not be available anymore, as Forbes reports.

Venture Beat points out that this is the company's way of slowly phasing out their old Operating Systems, much like what happened to Windows 98, XP and Vista in the past. This also shifts the spotlight to Windows 10, the company's current OS, which has not been well-received by users at the moment.

Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended in 2015, while the extended support will be available until 2020. Mainstream Support covers warranty claims and bug fixes, as Extended Support only handles security updates.  For Windows 8, mainstream support will be available for users until 2018, and extended support up to 2023. Windows 10 will still have until 2020 for the mainstream support to end, and 2025 for the extended support.

Manufacturers are still selling devices with Windows 7 and 8 pre-installed in the market, allowing them to deplete their stock of the Operating Systems.

Windows 7, one of most-loved Operating Systems, was released in October 2009, being a replacement to the Windows Vista. Windows 8 was made available to the public on October 2012. Its update, Windows 8.1 came out the following year. Windows 10, released in July 2015, is boasted by Microsoft to be different from its predecessors. Labeled as a "service", Microsoft claims that Windows 10 can be upgraded with new features, such as the recent Anniversary Update back in August 2016.