They did. Windows 7 came out 11 years ago in October 2009. Mainstream support ended January 2015, which is fine, but those who paid could get support up through January 2020. That’s just over ten years of support - same as Ubuntu LTS (10 versus the regular 5).

Not to mention Windows 8 came out in October 2012 (with 8.1 the next year) and Windows 10 came out July 2015. I think it’s reasonable for Microsoft to want people to upgrade within 11 years at least once. Especially since Windows 10’s been out for over five years.

For context, Windows 7 came out when OS X Snow Leopard did.

For more context, the last Snow Leopard update was July 25, 2011 and was completely unsupported as of February 25, 2014 (although an update for the App Store was released in 2016). Windows 7 received updates through 2019, general support was dropped on January 13, 2015 and extended support dropped on January 14, 2020. The support period for Windows 7 was mightily impressive in comparison to the competition in this case, although the upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion was easier than Windows 7 to 10 (excluding dropping Rosetta and ending PowerPC support)

Extended support until 2020/01 won't need to be paid as we know. Need to pay for Extended Security Update if you still need to receive security updates now.

They do continue to support Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008/R2 for a fee. The fees aren't hateful, and any size organization can enroll in the program.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-secu...

I'm pretty sure they do support 7 (and earlier), for an exorbitant fee, for their largest clients.

The program is called "Extended Security Updates for Windows 7", and the fee isn't exorbitant, but it's not necessarily cheap either. For 2020 it's $25 / PC, rising to $50 / PC for 2021, and $100 / PC for 2022. There's background here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-secu...

Background: I have a Customer who needed to maintain Windows 7 support for a legacy application on a single computer. For $175 to get 3 more years out of a paid-for critical application it was a "no-brainer" (and 3 more years to figure out a replacement strategy). Obviously, not all situations will be as simple.

That’s cheaper per year than Office 365.

Which I would love to pay as a consumer Win 7 Pro user but unfortunately MSFT is not interested in that.

Win10 -- which I also own -- has horrible UI and takes the simplicity + familiarity out of Windows, and I just don't want to move any active work to it.

Mainstream support ended almost six years ago. But extended support (meaning those who pay the big bucks) (officially) ended in January this year after 10 years of support. Whether they still unofficially support those who pay even bigger amounts? I don’t know.

Are you a GPT3 bot?

A bot would have capitalized Unemployed to maintain the inconsistency.