Today Microsoft announced the end of forum support for a wide variety of products, from Zune to Windows 7, as well as IE10 and a variety of office products. The official end of life of these products was some time ago, but users could still access the technical support forums and occasionally get an answer from a Microsoft representative or forum VIP. This is coming to an end as at least some of the forums are being locked, which will prevent users from helping users. On the plus side, this also means that those threads will not receive posts from users who only want to vent and bury any previous answers that they may or may not have tried.
Slashdot commenters are somewhat agitated by this move, as you would expect.
"Microsoft has announced that starting next month it will no longer be participating in the technical support forums for Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT and numerous other products. On the software front, the company says that it will also no longer provide support for Microsoft Security Essentials, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010 and 2013 as of July."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Microsoft is Working on its Own Game Streaming, Netflix-Like Service @ Slashdot
- What's Thermal Throttling and How to Prevent It @ Techspot
- What got breached this week? Ticket portals, DNA sites, and Atlanta's police cameras @ The Register
- iOS 11.4 is borking battery life for some iPhone users @ The Inquirer
- What Happened @ Intel Computex 2018 With Gregory Bryant! @ TechARP
- US regains supercomputer crown from Chinese, for now @ The Register
- AORUS Aquarium PC Mod – Learn How They Did It @ TechARP
- [James Bruton] Is Making A Dog: OpenDog Project @ Hackaday
- OCC Reviews the VIVO Adjustable Under-Desk Slider PC Mount
- Get Quake Champions FREE for a Limited Time
“The official end of life of
“The official end of life of these products was some time ago,”
NOT TRUE, Windows 7 goes EOL in 2020 and it’s only mainstream support that has ended(January 13, 2015) for Win 7 but not security patches/bug fixes that are still supported until January 14, 2020!
That’s one very disingenuous statment saying that Windows 7 is EOL when 2020 is still a good 1 1/2 years away! M$ is still not going to force users to abandon windows 7 in favor of that Windows 10 eternal BETA edition!
Security Essentials needs to be supported until 2020 also or there will be problems for security on windows 7. M$ has to provide security support until 2020 for windows 7 or the enterprise customers will be very angry and that enterprise money talks.
The third party security software folks are sure not going to stop supporting windows 7 and lose all that business also.
The end of preinstalled sales
The end of preinstalled sales was October 31, 2016 so if you want to be pedantic, please do a better job and list all possible dates instead of just the one, which isn't really even applicable, that agrees with your nitpicking.
Please do a better job of
Please do a better job of sorting out Windows OSs EOLs from any applications software products from M$ so there is less confusion. Windwos 7 is not going away for a good while just like Windows XP. And more folks are not going to that eternal BETA Windows 10 even if they have to Install a Linux Kernel based hypervisor and Run Wondows 7 safely locked down in a Hypervisor OS Instance. Games will be making use of Vulkan and that’s going to be what many folks will do with all those cores that AMD are offering up to bring to any Linux Kernel based hypervisor plenty of available cores on which to safely lock down windows 7 after 2020.
Linux Gaming is also progressing along nicely also so that can be run under the hypervisor along with windows 7 and a whole range of gaming can be done.
Folks still have their Windows 7 OEM copies and there are workarounds for getting windows 7 working on the latest AMD hardware also. It all points to desperation from the folks in Redmond and just wait until 2020 and the big M$ lockin begins for those fools that jumped on the windows 10 bandwagon!
If I was posting about any
If I was posting about any single on of the things you mentioned, I might just do that. Of course, this is a post about Microsoft Support Forums which is probably why I didn't talk about AMD, Linux or hypervisors.
Their tech support has been
Their tech support has been absolutely useless for decades anyway. They are as worthless as the fake M$ tech support scammers that impersonate them.