No, Microsoft isn’t killing Windows 7 on October 31st 2014

Despite what many will have you believe, nothing bad is going to happen to your computer on October 31st. Your Windows 7 machine will boot just fine and continue to receive timely updates from Microsoft. So what exactly is this October 31st hoopla all about?

On October 31st, Microsoft will stop providing its hardware partners (HP, Dell, Samsung, Lenovo etc) copies of Windows 7 (all popular consumer editions). This isn’t something you, as a consumer, should be concerned about. This concerns OEMs, who will have to ship their computers with either Windows 8, 8.1, 8.1 Update, or some other operating system.

As the end-user, Microsoft’s forthcoming action isn’t going to affect you. In case you didn’t know, the company stopped selling Windows 7 copies last year. So will these manufacturers finally ditch Windows 7 — the world’s most used desktop operating system — in favor of Windows 8 and higher operating system? Perhaps. We do not know how this affects OEM’s existing stocks, and the ones that it will be piling up until the end of next month.

The mainstream support for Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 will reach its deadline on January 14, 2015. And that shouldn’t alarm you either, as you will continue to receive free security updates until January 2020. While you can continue to stick with Windows 7 for several more years, you should know that keeping a computer up-to-date, especially with the latest operating system version, has its own benefits.