Microsoft at it again discontinuing Win 7 Ultimate

[Russ Smith]

We buy systems at work from Dell that come with Win 7 pro, and then we do the Windows Anytime Upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate(for Bitlocker) for $129.95.

Apparently not enough people are switching to Win 8 so MS is going to force it, so they have discontinued Ultimate. You can't do the online upgrade you have to have an upgrade or Product Key. Very hard to find a full retail version of Ultimate now, I paid over $400 each for 2 copies and had to drive 40 miles to find a Frys who had it. Then I had to beg to buy both copies, they only wanted to sell me one. I just used one of them on a new system so we have one left.

If you can find it online, it's 4-500 bucks and nobody seems to have it. you can get the system developers version for half that but that's intended for use by people who build systems, install the software, and then sell the system. We can't get a clear answer from MS if we qualify for that or not, I don't think we do. It's all good until something goes wrong and you call MS for support and find out you have none because they don't support developer versions.

So we're now evaluating systems on Dells' site by is that a system we like, and can we get it with Ultimate pre installed so we don't have to use our last upgrade.

Eventually we have to go to 8, 8.1 actually, and then upgrade that to get Bitlocker. Our concern is many of the programs we use are not the current version(cheaper than paying for the current version we don't really need) and some of them had issues with 7, expecting they will work with 8 seems a prayer at best.

I spoke to several companies about this they all say the same thing, we keep telling MS how popular Ultimate is and they refuse to make more copies available to us, or sell us product keys.

 

[BigRedRage]

My office is mostly on 7, I am still on XP at work (thank god)

I cant imagine having a productive business on windows 8.

 

[AZZenny]

Of course in April MS stops all support for XP. I have XP Pro on four home and work computers, and my computer guy is encouraging me to overhaul everything sooner rather than later, partly for security reasons. I'll have to get at least 3 new computers and all new versions of pretty much all the major software programs I use.

They do everything I need for work and leisure perfectly functionally right now. I don't need a single thing that W7 or 8 can give me. XP has been more than adequate. Being forced to change everything that isn't broken totally pisses me off.

 

[bankybruce]

My office is mostly on 7, I am still on XP at work (thank god)

I cant imagine having a productive business on windows 8.

Why? You can have 8 boot to the Desktop and treat it just like 7, but have the ability to have all programs from XP, Vista and 7 work on it. I dread having to using anything other than 8 now and I am using my Surface more than my laptop for personal use. Best of all, with my Surface, I connect wirelessly on my G network and can download at 50 MBPS. I downloaded a 5 GB movie in about 15 minutes the other day.

 

[crisper57]

Dealing with this at work. XP support expires in April and we have hundreds of machines that need replacement before then.

Also, their licensing fees for my organization went from $250,000 annually to $4,000,000 this year. They know we are dependent on their software and that changing over to Apple, or some other competitor, would be even more expensive. God, I hate those guys!

 

[BillsCarnage]

Dealing with this at work. XP support expires in April and we have hundreds of machines that need replacement before then.

Also, their licensing fees for my organization went from $250,000 annually to $4,000,000 this year. They know we are dependent on their software and that changing over to Apple, or some other competitor, would be even more expensive. God, I hate those guys!

Curious as to what is causing such a large jump in licensing cost?? There's a big difference between licensing Windows and replacing computers. If you're replacing hardware, you can't blame MS for that.

I don't understand the problem with end of line support. Literally any product a consumer buys has a warranty period, so why is this any different? Not to mention XP is what, a 14yr old OS?? The migration to Win7 should have happened already. You think Apple supports OS-whatever from 2001? Nope. And, I'd argue they're worse than MS and forcing the upgrade path, but because it's Apple it's OK.

As for Win8.1 (soon to be update 1), most who still hate it haven't spent much time with it and that was probably in Metro. Install Start8, classic shell or any of the other options (and free) to get the start menu back and most people will never even know the difference outside of the slight visual changes. And they all boot straight to the desktop if you don't want to set it manually.

Or wait til Win9 next year.

 

[Russ Smith]

Curious as to what is causing such a large jump in licensing cost?? There's a big difference between licensing Windows and replacing computers. If you're replacing hardware, you can't blame MS for that.

I don't understand the problem with end of line support. Literally any product a consumer buys has a warranty period, so why is this any different? Not to mention XP is what, a 14yr old OS?? The migration to Win7 should have happened already. You think Apple supports OS-whatever from 2001? Nope. And, I'd argue they're worse than MS and forcing the upgrade path, but because it's Apple it's OK.

As for Win8.1 (soon to be update 1), most who still hate it haven't spent much time with it and that was probably in Metro. Install Start8, classic shell or any of the other options (and free) to get the start menu back and most people will never even know the difference outside of the slight visual changes. And they all boot straight to the desktop if you don't want to set it manually.

Or wait til Win9 next year.

We haven't tried a Win 8 machine yet, we will have to eventually. I've tried them outside of work, 8.1 makes it better it gets closer to 7. The main issue is the whole new learning curve and at least 3 of our vendors have notified us if we use Win 8 they will no longer provide tech support unless we upgrade to their newer software. This is our Purchasing program (Parts and Vendors) and 2 engineering programs (Mathematica and Orcad). Solidworks has a bunch of known issues with Win 8 so they strongly recommend you upgrade to SW 14(we upgraded to 13 6 months ago). Sure we could upgrade but we're a small company, right now everything is dialed in, we know if we switch to 8 some things won't work right and we'll have to spend valuable time finding out why.

For example Parts and Vendors has known issues with Win 7 permissions, you change the default tax and save it, the next time you open, you have to change it again. They put out patches for all this. They don't have patches for Win 8, they instead insist you upgrade to the newer version and then the patch for that. Zemax has similar issues in fact my dad uses that and the company he was at got so fed up with it they dialed back from Win 8 to 7 so they could get Zemax to work correctly. In one case they were required to pay to downgrade to 7 That's a cost we don't really want to bear if we don't have to.

I'm fine with them ending support, this is not support. The anytime upgrade is literally just a Windows Update that doesn't change to activate Bitlocker and a few other functions. Bitlocker exists in Win 7 Pro, it's just read only, it takes the upgrade to activate it. So MS doesn't have to do anything but keep that upgrade live on their servers and sell license codes to activate it.

I was literally told by 2 different Fry's people that MS told them this is part of their strategy to push 8, take away things in 7 people want so they have to buy 8 to get it.

 

[JS22]

Of course in April MS stops all support for XP. I have XP Pro on four home and work computers, and my computer guy is encouraging me to overhaul everything sooner rather than later, partly for security reasons. I'll have to get at least 3 new computers and all new versions of pretty much all the major software programs I use.

They do everything I need for work and leisure perfectly functionally right now. I don't need a single thing that W7 or 8 can give me. XP has been more than adequate. Being forced to change everything that isn't broken totally pisses me off.

MS has been supporting XP for almost 15 years now which is impressive. The fact that they are still supporting it is a testament to how much they DON'T want to force legacy users to switch so often. Even so, I can understand how businesses are not going to like the associated costs. Bust still....15 years is a really long time. I don't even think the latest Apple OS supports their laptops from 2007/2008!

If you don't want to move to a new Windows OS (at home) why not look at something like Ubuntu? Or, my recent favorite, Elementary OS Luna, based on Ubuntu: http://elementaryos.org/

Many people laugh at the thought, but to be honest, most home computer users don't do much aside from web browsing, emails, watching videos, etc. Simple things that don't require Windows. As an added bonus Linux users rarely have to worry about security issues.

Just something to consider if you're not super-dependent on Windows apps. (Which, actually most CAN be ran inside of Linux with the help of something like Wine. I'm running Office 2007 on a Linux laptop.)

 

[Russ Smith]

It's ironic because I'm currently doing Win 8 "desktop support" for my dad. He's in Geneva Switzerland, his sister lives there and is very sick, can't speak right now but she uses a tablet to write. But the font is too small for my dad so he bought a computer for her, a laptop, and it's Win 8. The store installed the English version for him, was in French, but it's still not a touch screen and she can't figure out how to use it.

So I found online instructions on how to get to the desktop, and then he asked how the hell do I setup wifi. So I had to google how to get to control panel to bring that up.

Just too steep a learning curve, hidden "charms" that aren't obvious are just not that intuitive.