Microsoft announces yet another Windows 7 support extension (for SMBs)

Microsoft announced yesterday that the option to get extended support for the company's Windows 7 operating system will be available to businesses of all sizes.

Support for the Windows 7 operating system ends in January 2020. Microsoft will deliver security updates for the operating system until that month but won't produce security updates or any other update anymore afterward for free.

The company announced previously that Enterprise customers may extend support by up to three years. The price of support starts at $50 per user and year and double each year so that $100 and $200 need to be paid per user in the following years.

Up until yesterday, that was the only way to extend support for Windows 7 (except for the exception of voting machines in the US 2020 election which would also be supplied with security updates).

Yesterday's announcement allows businesses of any size to extend support for up to three years.

With that in mind, today we are announcing that, through January 2023, we will extend the availability of paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) to businesses of all sizes. (Previously, Windows 7 ESU was only available to Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise customers in Volume Licensing.) The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis with the price increasing each year.

The extended security updates for Windows 7 will be sold on a per-device base and not on a per-user base like they are for Enterprise customers. The price per device depends on the year and edition of Windows 7.

Basically, the costs per year are identical for Windows 7 Professional and only half for Windows 7 Enterprise. It needs to be noted that the SMB extensions apply to the entire device while the Enterprise extensions to individual users.

Product	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
SMB: Windows 7 Pro ESU	50	100	200
SMB: Windows 7 Enterprise ESU	25	50	100
Enterprise: Windows 7 Pro ESU	50	100	200
Enterprise Windows 7 Enterprise ESU	50	100	200

Businesses may start to purchase ESU "through the cloud solution provider program" for Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Enterprise devices starting December 1, 2019.

Additional information is available on the Microsoft 365 Partner Center. Home users may install security patches provided by third-party security company 0Patch for their Windows 7 devices.

Closing Words

Business and Enterprise customers may purchase extended support updates for Windows 7 for up to three years which leaves Home users as the only group that cannot purchase extended support for the operating system. While it is unclear how many Home users would pay for extended Windows 7 support, it is not unrealistic to assume that a good chunk would if the pricing was right.

I think it is unlikely that Microsoft will announce a support extension option for Home users even though the company could probably make quite a bit of money from such an extension.

Now You: Should Microsoft offer support extensions for Home users as well? (via Born)

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☛ El artículo completo original de Martin Brinkmann lo puedes ver aquí.