Microsoft turns enterprise focus to Windows 10 and new hardware

The statement comes from Microsoft’s Executive Vice President for Windows and Devices Group, Terry Myerson, who posted in a blog post that Microsoft’s latest OS has already seen over 200 million active devices and more users are flocking in as demand continues to rise.

The software giant also launched previous year Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book as well as new games for Xbox One.

In short, Microsoft is saying, “You really want to upgrade to Windows 10, because that’s the only way you’ll be assured of using all of the technology that’s available to you”. ‘Compared to Windows 7, Windows 10 and Skylake enables up to 30x better graphics and 3x the battery life – with the unmatched security of Credential Guard utilizing silicon supported virtualization’.

Through July 17, 2017, Skylake devices on the supported list will also be supported with Windows 7 and 8.1.

Microsoft has now created an application called “get windows 10”.

As for Xbox, more fans logged on to Xbox Live on Xbox One last December 28 than any other day in Xbox history.

If you buy new hardware it will only run the latest Windows iteration – forget about legacy drivers. The modern computing world is being defined by this deep integration between silicon, platform, and hardware and we are excited by the joint innovations ahead with these partners. “Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol Ridge” silicon”.

Microsoft’s message is clear Windows 10 can work on older, newer, and still-to-come PCs.

Older silicon will still run Windows 7 and 8.1 even on new machines, with Windows 7 support running through January 14, 2020 and Windows 8.1 support running until January 10, 2023.

So things have started off very well for the new OS despite the wide fluctuation in the Windows 10 Experience itself between users and much of that can be attributed to the wide variety of hardware that is out there running Windows 10.

Microsoft has ended support for the original release of its poorly-received operating system.

If you use Windows 7 on Intel’s 5th Intel generation or earlier (Broadwell or similar AMD) x86 processors then operating system support – patches and updates – will stop by 13 January, 2020. Microsoft has announced an update to its support policy that lays out its plans for future updates to its older operating systems, and the new rules mean that future PC owners with next-generation Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors will have to use Windows 10. We’re also pleased to be working closely with Microsoft to ensure enterprise customers purchasing new devices with earlier versions of Windows and Intel 6th generation Core processors have a secure and reliable experience. A full list of supported PCs for the 18-month period is supposed to be released next week.