Microsoft Nails Down Windows End-Of-Life Dates

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Monday, February 20th, 2012
medium_3419565232

Still using Windows Vista? XP? Why? Well, whatever the reason, Microsoft has clarified some of their end-of-life dates for older versions of Windows, including XP. This is mostly about support on the business side but it could be useful if you’ve got an old machine that’s acting up (or you refuse to upgrade).

Ed Bott found the actual dates in a Japanese Microsoft blog post:

Support end date for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are as follows:

Windows XP 4/8/2014

Windows Vista 4/11/2017

Windows 7 1/14/2020

As he explains, this doesn’t mean you can buy a copy of XP right now for any money but you can get “Mainstream and Extended” support for implementations of the OS. Good to know if you have something mission critical running on an old Compaq.

photo credit: @Doug88888 via photopin cc