Farewell Windows 7

[Dos_Box]

Well, today is the day. The day where we finally say goodbye to Windows 7 in a professional capacity as the plug is pulled (unless you are paying ££££'s for extended support) on updates for this vernerable workhorse of an operating system.

The wunderkind operating system that surpassed it’s disappointing older sibling and made us realise that not all babies are cute when Windows 8 came along.

 

It had everything we needed (and more besides) wrapped up in a GUI that removed many of the annoying parts of Vista – just trying to get to network settings was a nightmare – and brought us back onto the familiar turf that XP had laid down.

 

Like Vista before it though, it came in many flavours (6 to be precise) muddying the market with a couple at the lower end (Starter and Home Basic) serving almost no purpose whatsoever apart from helping to sell (very) cheap laptops. Beyond this though, Home Premium was excellent, and the in-built Media Centre was widely adopted by those who wanted a media PC in the days before smart TV’s.

 

The Professional Edition was a great step-up from XP for schools with lots of new features but was sadly lacking in Bitlocker which was only available in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions and causing many to question why there were two further editions above Professional, with one (Enterprise), not even available to buy off the shelf.

 

Fast, reliable and familiar, Microsoft really nailed it with Windows 7 and even though we have been using other, more recent Microsoft operating systems since then, it will always have a special place in our memories.

Sleep well Windows 7, you were a true gem and your work here is done.

[PotNoodleTech]

Windows 7 - a solid, fast and ultra reliable workhorse. The likes of which we will never see again in our lifetime!!

[southhamster]

Farewell old friend. You will be missed.

[unixman_again]

Windows 7 - a solid, fast and ultra reliable workhorse. The likes of which we will never see again in our lifetime!!

 

But not as quick as XP!

 

Somebody asked me yesterday if forcing people to upgrade is just M$ method of ripping off more money. "Yes" was my reply.

[jthompson]

Sad to see it go in some ways. We have lots of teaching staff who really didn't want the Win10 upgrade, which speaks to how well MS made the interface.

 

I got sick of seeing that default sunflower profile picture and the weird blue hummingbird vapour trail wallpaper a loooong time ago, though.

[Zourous]

Bye bye Windows Heaven!

[DrCheese]

I got sick of seeing that default sunflower profile picture and the weird blue hummingbird vapour trail wallpaper a loooong time ago, though.

 

It hurts when I watch BBC News and they still have that showing in the background behind the news readers

1) Update your damn OS already!

2) Change the default background, it looks so much more professional to have a proper corporate branding.

[GREED]

Much like the (old) Star Trek films, every other OS was a winner (with the others being Shatner-directed duds) XP and 7 included - though seems 10 is falling into the new-age (Kelvin timeline?) ones to break that mold...

[Dos_Box]

Much like the (old) Star Trek films, every other OS was a winner (with the others being Shatner-directed duds) XP and 7 included - though seems 10 is falling into the new-age (Kelvin timeline?) ones to break that mold...

 

I don't mind 10, and it is definately a step-up from 8.1, but it didn't have the 'wow' factor that 7 did when I first started to use it. I find 10 stable, reliable and great to use, it just seems to be lacking 'something'. Personality perhaps?

Maybe I should just be happy with what I have!

[jthompson]

I really like 10, in that there's nothing glaring problematic with it and we've been throwing it at loads of different ages of hardware without any real issues. It could do with having a bit more information density in the the 'new' parts of the UI, on a par with File Explorer, and the Settings app is a horrid thing to have to use on a daily basis (I'd prefer to have those options surfaced more like widgets in Start search results, but I'll forgive it that since they added the lovely dark mode.

[bodminman]

Ciao Windows 7!

[GREED]

I don't mind 10, and it is definately a step-up from 8.1, but it didn't have the 'wow' factor that 7 did when I first started to use it. I find 10 stable, reliable and great to use, it just seems to be lacking 'something'. Personality perhaps?

Maybe I should just be happy with what I have!

 

Perhaps also there is an element of 'this is a OS' so as long as it is stable and is the scaffolding to support other apps that we do want to use daily, isn't that enough/what it is for?

[3s-gtech]

Good old 7. Good enough for us to punt out XP (which was excellent, let's be honest) for all the nice new features (TRIM support! Aero! The Experience Index! Bitlocker! etc)

After testing it on my PC, and doing the usual domain prep, I was pretty eager to roll it out fairly early on, and I never regretted doing so.

[Dos_Box]

Good old 7. Good enough for us to punt out XP (which was excellent, let's be honest) for all the nice new features (TRIM support! Aero! The Experience Index! Bitlocker! etc)

After testing it on my PC, and doing the usual domain prep, I was pretty eager to roll it out fairly early on, and I never regretted doing so.

 

I miss the experience index! I thought it was a great way to judge your system. Mind you, after several years on Windows 7 and upgraded hardware, you soon maxed it out

Edited January 14, 2020 by Dos_Box

[DrBeaker]

I miss the experience index! I thught it was a great way to judge your system. Mind you, after several years on Windows 7 and upgraded hardware, you soon maxed it out

It was using the lowest/slowest part of your system apparently. So 9/10 times it was the onboard graphics that were the lowest value.

[sonofsanta]

I'm in a quandary here, because I know that saying "they don't make them like that anymore!" and "we'll never see its like again..." makes me a crotchety old man, but... they don't make them like that anymore, and we'll never see its like again.

 

The time on Windows 7 was the most stable time I've known as a sysadmin. Partly that's because the upgrade from XP allowed me to shape the network and the GPOs the way I wanted them, rather than the way I'd inherited them, but overnight it honestly made one of the tech posts here redundant (not in a literal employment sense!) because there was so much less firefighting needed than on XP. It was just stable, and freed us up to do more interesting project work and push things forward rather than scrabbling to keep them from backsliding as with XP.

 

And it was so easy to configure as a sysadmin! I like Win10 as a consumer, but as a sysadmin the stuff I need to make it work across a network is either half-baked and incomplete (U-EV) or unnecessarily complicated compared to previous (Start Menu layouts) or just bloody impossible because Microsoft think they know better (anyone managed to remove the Mixed Reality Centre yet? No? Me either). Microsoft are so concerned with getting the new features out of the door on their 6 month cycle now that they just about get it working for the user-facing aspect but run out of time to provide any decent configuration or documentation for us sysadmins.

 

Goodnight, sweet prince. You were the best they ever made.

[3s-gtech]

Just imagine if MS did an Open Source fork of 7/Server 2008 R2 while they continued on with 8, 8.1 and 10. Yes - of course it was impossible and they had no reason to do so. But we'd have this great OS that would be continuously updated and supported from an already solid base. 10 has been pretty good to me at work and home, but it has taken a huge amount of hacking, cludging, configuration and sheer graft to get there. 7 was much easier to implement well.

[googlemad]

If you're that fond of Windows 7 get a job in the NHS, who will probably still be using it come 2027

 

One thing I won't miss is when you do that nice clean install of Windows 7 SP1 then do a scan for updates (which takes about a million years...did they ever fix that?!) followed by about 189 updates to install! Amazing how it never got an official SP2 really

[free780]

I ended up with a automated build and capture using MDT. It took at least a day.

 

Saying that since 2016 it's been Windows 10 all the way. Of course its been absolutely seamless with no issues what so ever. [emoji6] Being an OS primarily targeted at 1:1 scenarios causes no issues in education.

 

I do remember a Windows Update for Windows 7 that slowed down PCs with 2GB RAM.

 

I feel sorry for those who are stuck on Windows 7/Server 2008 R2. The pain gets worse the longer you leave it.

[MartinT]

Adieu Windows 7. I don't look back, only forward. Windows 10 is, in every way that I can think of, superior. Onwards and upwards!

[Davit2005]

Still using it with a CNC machine at home. It has no access to the Internet, local account, tuned for performance and only read access to an SMB share to download CNC Gcode programs. The PC does not have to be that powerful and till I upgrade the controller for the CNC it is going to stay that way. Edited July 29, 2020 by Davit2005