Bott: Want to pay for Win7 Extended Support? Good luck.

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OK, Ed didn’t quite put it that way, but he’s run up against the same roadblock we’ve been hitting. From his new article in ZDNet So you want to keep
[See the full post at: Bott: Want to pay for Win7 Extended Support? Good luck.]

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doriel, Pepsiboy, Pim, abbodi86

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P.S. it’s now $61 per machine versus $50.  They realized that the cost didn’t align with the SA folks pricing.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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woody

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I saw that discrepancy, and wondered if it’s official – or if it’s just the way things are: Microsoft announces one price, CSPs charge a different price.

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WildBill

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UPDATE: Windows 7 ESU in CSP – Pricing
On December 2, Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) were made available to businesses of all sizes through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP).

We have identified a price discrepancy with the Windows 7 Extended Security Updates available through the CSP channel. As of Tuesday, December 10, we have fixed the discrepancy to ensure that all commercial customers have the same suggested retail price for the Windows 7 ESU. Now, the ESU price that CSP partners see will align to the pricing offered through our volume licensing channel since April 2019.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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WildBill

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The Three Card Monte pic you have with this post is apropos. A Shell Game pic would be as well… since Micro$oft is scamming small businesses & consumers with the offer of ESUs. The key takeaway quote from Ed Bott’s article:

It’s almost like Microsoft wants people to become discouraged and give up.

Or just upgrade Windows 7 to Windows 10 v1809, v1903, or v1909. Better yet (for Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, & many other Windows PC makers), just buy a new Windows 10 PC. M$ doesn’t care about small businesses & individual consumers. As Ed, Susan the “Patch Lady”, & Amy Babinchak are learning, M$ will take ESU money from big clients who can afford the escalating prices for 3 years, & blame everyone else for not moving on. The next target? Windows 8/8.1 in 2023… all users, since that version of Windows flopped like Vista as far as Micro$oft is concerned.

Bought a refurbished Windows 10 64-bit, currently updated to 22H2. Have broke the AC adapter cord going to the 8.1 machine, but before that, coaxed it into charging. Need to buy new adapter if wish to continue using it.
Wild Bill Rides Again...

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wdburt1, Moonbear, Cybertooth

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Unless you’re an Enterprise user that’s already paying them tons of cash, Microsoft really doesn’t want people staying on Win 7.  It’s partially the support burden on them, but also that Win 7 users aren’t a part of the Win 10 infrastructure. If you want to be really cynical, that means machines that aren’t radiating telemetry data to Microsoft, although my observation is that so far, I’m not seeing evidence that Microsoft is abusing telemetry by doing anything other than what they’re saying publicly.  That’s not to say that they aren’t doing a small amount (or won’t do more in the future), but at the moment, it still seems to be minor.

The other thing is that machines that aren’t running Windows 10 (in fact, currently-supported versions of Windows 10) don’t have the current feature sets that allow developers to code for those feature sets.  That means less demand for the new features, and less ability to monetize those new features.

There is very definitely a caste system of users, but that’s nothing new.  There’s the Enterprise customers who generate the big $$$ and that’s where Microsoft’s focus really is.  Then there are the Home users that can be used as canon fodder for leading-edge testing and debugging, and therefore, still useful to Microsoft.  The in-between caste is the SMB sector, but that’s nothing new, in that what’s available is often some mix of stripped-down Enterprise-grade stuff, or extended consumer-grade stuff, and often, neither fits especially well.  For too much of the software industry, SMB simply doesn’t generate enough revenue to be worth the effort of giving significant support.

Extended Win 7 support is simply another example.

Actually, beyond the analogy of three-card monte, the other analogy would be insurance as a bet with the insurance company that you’re going to lose.  They’ll take your money, but the more you think it’s likely that you’ll lose, the more they want to take your bet.

With Win 7 Extended Support, this is very visible, in that as much as Microsoft will charge in the first year, the fees will go up in successive years.  Thus, the public posture is that if you’re not quite ready to abandon Win 7 just yet, they’ll make it possible to stay around a little longer, but that they want serious money for it.  And the longer you wait, the more money they want — not so much profiteering, as it is to make moving less painful than staying.

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OscarCP, wdburt1, Cybertooth

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With all the headaches that come with Windows 10, my opinion is that Windows 10 is a bigger flop than Vista ever was.

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wdburt1

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10 is very much not a flop.  It’s just hard to migrate to a newer version of anything.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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WildBill

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I don’t remember Vista, 98,95,ME, 7 or XP shoving updates down my throat like Microsoft does with Windows 10, so that is the big reason I’m calling it a flop. I just don’t like being force fed something I don’t want. The word I’m searching for is ( Choice ). We don’t have that anymore without third party software or hacks.

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wdburt1, Cybertooth, FakeNinja, Kranium

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I install updates once a month.  I install them when I want to.   The idea that they are shoved down is not correct.  They can be controlled.  Yes it means Pro, but I never liked Home versions of anything.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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NetDef, WildBill

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anonymous wrote:

With all the headaches that come with Windows 10, my opinion is that Windows 10 is a bigger flop than Vista ever was.

I’m not a fan of Vista, but at it’s peak it had around 400 million users.

In October, Microsoft said that Windows 10 was installed on over 900 million devices.

I believe Windows 7 topped-out at around 700 million licenses sold, but I don’t know the exact count.

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jabeattyauditor wrote:

I’m not a fan of Vista, but at it’s peak it had around 400 million users.

In October, Microsoft said that Windows 10 was installed on over 900 million devices.

I believe Windows 7 topped-out at around 700 million licenses sold, but I don’t know the exact count.

Install base has nothing to do with the quality of Windows OS (or any other OS..).
Half of that installed 900M Windows 10 came for the notorious GWX/Red X swindle.

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wdburt1, Kranium

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Alex5723 wrote:

Half of that installed 900M Windows 10 came for the notorious GWX/Red X swindle.

Evidence? Citation? Anything?

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1485 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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Alex5723 wrote:

jabeattyauditor wrote:

I’m not a fan of Vista, but at it’s peak it had around 400 million users.

In October, Microsoft said that Windows 10 was installed on over 900 million devices.

I believe Windows 7 topped-out at around 700 million licenses sold, but I don’t know the exact count.

Install base has nothing to do with the quality of Windows OS (or any other OS..).
Half of that installed 900M Windows 10 came for the notorious GWX/Red X swindle.

Of course, I said nothing about quality, nor did the original anonymous poster…

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anonymous wrote:

With all the headaches that come with Windows 10, my opinion is that Windows 10 is a bigger flop than Vista ever was.

What you don’t realize is that there are way more platforms out there now. There are way more people on computers. It really is much more difficult to test software on all of them.

Byte me!

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[Moonbear]

Given the way Microsoft seemed to act (at least in my view anyway) like everyone should just happily move on to Windows 10 as soon as it was released no matter what the issues involved or the shady ways that were used to get it onto peoples systems, I’m honestly amazed that the extended support program has gotten as far off the ground as it has.

Given how many people are interested in at least being able to get the information to see if they are even eligible to buy the license, you would think at least that information would be easily available, even if nothing else is.

Considering the  difficulty in finding information, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a story suddenly appeared saying the extended support program had simply been cancelled.

As @WildBill quoted from the article: It’s almost like Microsoft wants people to become discouraged and give up. That’s exactly what they want.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Moonbear.

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WildBill, Kranium

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When a retailer advertises an item for $value, then customer comes to retailer seeking item, then retailer says “oops, (ran out/marketing error/any reason that is not in customer control), but I can upsell you to this item for $value + $more; that retailer is practicing Bait and Switch.

To protect from accusations of Bait and Switch, the retailer can instead Lower the cost of item to match the advertised value. Then offer rebate to all other customers who feel wronged by the new rate offered to new customers.

But I recognize we are decades past a time of good business practice. And the scale of Global Marketing makes us all too forgiving towards a corporation that just cannot afford to cut eleven dollars from each seat of an expiring product. Wait, how much profit did Microsoft claim last year?

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[NetDef]

My experience matches Susan’s and Ed’s . . .

I have long established relationships with a few cloud service providers.  Among my client base there are around ~20 machines that cannot be upgraded to 8.1 or 10.  (All others are happily on Windows 10.)  Between budget and legacy considerations, we would very much like to extend those machines one more year.

My CSP’s all say they do not know how to buy nor deliver the ESU . . .  it’s maddening!  And just like Ed – when I contact one through Microsoft’s referral site – they don’t want to waste time for “only 20 seats.”

 

~ Group "Weekend" ~

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by NetDef.

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woody, Kranium, WildBill, OscarCP, Cybertooth

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Looks like Pax8 is offering ESU, if anyone is looking for a distributor – if you’re an MSP or tech services company, you should be using them anyway since they are very easy to deal with for Office 365, etc.

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NetDef

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Our CSP Appriver isn’t offering the extended updates.  I then spoke with Insight and they do have the Windows 7 ESU sku.  It was listed as $50. 

They don’t have the Windows 2008 R2 one though which is what we had several customers looking for.  They thought it maybe coming out in January price list.

I have to imagine there are a lot of people asking about this but they seemed not too up on it which seems kind of odd for the volume they probably due.

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That’s an awful lot of hoops to jump through to buy a single product key that’s good for a year and doesn’t require any deployment or support.

I thought too, that you will purchase product key for extended support. M$ could make more money, if single user could pay for one licence for his home. Cant tell why M$ wastes such opportunity to make more money.. interesting reading.

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 20H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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Cybertooth

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The probability for home and small business to get continuing patch protection beyond  EOL next month does look discouraging right now. It is also not clear that those of us who have, for very good reasons, skipped some patches in the past will qualify to get 0patch support with their micropatches, either. This is still an open question as I wrote this.

I feel for those who need to keep using Windows 7 for their jobs and also need to access the Internet with their PCs for the same reason. I am fortunate in that do not need to be on the Web for my job, for the most part, and for the rest, I have Linux in dual but with Windows in my PC. I use the Linux side to do work on the Web, browse, stream video, etc., keeping Win 7 off the net, and still use the applications in Windows 7 that I need without installing any patches: if they are working fine right now, as far as I am concerned, why won’t they work equally fine in another three or four years, by which time the PC will be overdue for retirement (it’s already 8 1/2 years old), assuming it lasts that long? Eventually, some things like new formats in Office, for example, could be a problem; or a new kind of compression or encryption becomes all the rage and there are no applications available to implement it in Windows 7. Or there is a change in standard from HTML5 to a newer one. In other words: the software technology evolves and becomes progressively less compatible with an old operating system: an old and familiar story.

I have confidence that little harm will come to those of us that can manage to work with Windows and Linux. in dual boot. Data in files downloaded with Linux can still be processed, if necessary, with some application for Windows 7, as files can be readily shared between both systems in the same computer. What might cause problems are infected files, if passed from Linux to Windows, so scanning them with AV before passing them on to Windows is going to be a necessary precaution. Mildly annoying, but one can get used to it and keep going pretty much as usual, regardless. And the scanning will not protect just the Windows side, but the Linux one too.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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And beside fullscreen notifications and constant reminders, that W7 is reaching EOL, what will prevent users from using W7 in the future? They can remain on W7, right?

Dell Latitude E6530, Intel Core i5 @ 2.6 GHz, 4GB RAM, W10 20H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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Windows 7 will keep on running. Anyone can keep on using it as long as they wish on the hardware they have. It is likely they will have to go to Windows 10 on new hardware.

--Joe

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woody, OscarCP

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Just one question: Will MS-DEFCON still be applicable to Win7 during its extended support period?

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The principle behind DEFCON is to wait before patching and let others be the Beta testing Guinea Pigs. That principle still holds (and it applies to ALL versions of Windows, not just Win7).
There are still a lot of IFs in the ESU – IF you can get it without being a large corperation, IF we’ll be able to track the problems.

I’m guessing here, but I doubt seriously there will be functionally Groups A and B. My impression is MS will serve Rollups, with telemetry. But we’ll see.

I think there is still too much FOG to see very far ahead.

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woody

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woody & Susan (patch Lady)

did you read gborn’s recent blog about Win7 ESUs & pricing?
https://borncity.com/win/2019/12/17/windows-7-extended-security-updates-esu-program-price-and-source-for-smes/

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woody, Cybertooth, NetDef, Pim

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Note that, in his post, Born writes:

…In the meantime it is also clear that the activation and administration of the ESU keys must take place via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center of the end customer. This is another step by Microsoft to force people into the cloud.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

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Anyone have any luck purchasing Windows Server 2008 R2 ESU?  Seems impossible today via SPLA, CSP or any path we’ve tried via CDW, Insight, SHI, Microsoft account management (all roads lead to Azure upsell) and even Microsoft volume licensing support.  Even with significant Microsoft business we are stuck for months now, we were led to believe December they would be available as part of CSP but then only Windows 7 was available.

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