In our digital world, nearly everyone reading this right now stores some sort of information about themselves on a personal computer. Especially if said information is sensitive, it should be kept from the hands of people who want to use it maliciously.
No software is perfect. With millions of people attempting to exploit the system and get access to personal data, vulnerabilities will be found even in the best software. Having a strong developer team identifying and patching these vulnerabilities is crucial to the success of an operating system.
It is undeniable that Microsoft Windows operating system is the most used desktop OS worldwide at this time. Although many people have upgraded to windows 10 years ago, there are still millions of computers worldwide that run Windows 7. As of March 2020, over 20% of all Windows users are still using it.
March 2020 Windows usage statistics (from statcounter)
Mainstream support for Windows 7 was ended back in January 2015, however, extended support was running until this year’s first month. With three months past the EoL (End of Life) date, there are serious dangers that await those who are not ready to upgrade to the latest version yet.
Why does reaching EoL matter?
The End of Life means that there will no longer be bug fixes, security patches or new features, leaving the user significantly more susceptible to malware attacks. If there is a business which stores the personal information of its customers, it could be catastrophic if it were to succumb to malware due to a vulnerability discovered after the End of Life. This would compromise not only the business’ information, but the data on their customers too.
If you are still using Windows 7, you are effectively using a dead operating system. Despite your computer continuing to work, if a new bug or vulnerability were to be found, you would be at serious risk. It also means that soon, new software will most probably not work on your machine as it was built with a newer operating system in mind.
Even though Windows 7 is an OS that will go down in the computing history, it is now over 10 years old and is outdated. If your hardware allows it, we recommend switching to Windows 10. Hint: It only needs these:
- Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC.
- 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit.
- Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS, 20 GB for 64-bit OS.
- Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver.
- Display: 800x600.
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