Microsoft Will Start Selling Windows 7 Add-on Support On April 1

As you know, Microsoft had stopped offering the mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015. Besides, Microsoft made it clear to the public that it will also end the extended support for the old operating system on January 14, next year. Since then, many people will be forced to move off Windows 7.

Will The End Of Windows 7 Support Affect You?

Windows 7 Add-on Support Leaves Us More Time to Drop the System

Yet, recently, a new announcement came from Microsoft: the Windows 7 add-on support will be sold starting from April 1. Obviously, the add-on support refers to the services that Microsoft will continue to provide and they will be added to Windows 7.

Extended Security Updates

What is ESU?

If you are reluctant to upgrade your Windows 7 or you don’t have enough time to get the work done, you may turn to the new program – Extended Security Updates (ESU). So what is ESU exactly? In fact, it refers to the three years of support updates provided by Microsoft for Windows 7 systems. It’s one of the important Microsoft add ons for windows 7 (click here to know the best Windows 10 add ons).

What you will get by purchasing this post-retirement support?

• All users, including enterprise customers, will have more time to change their environments to Windows 10 (or Windows 8.1) from Windows 7: till January 2023.
• Besides, you’ll get the security fixes designed especially for the uncovered or reported vulnerabilities that are found in the OS (Microsoft will offer patches for only Critical or Important bugs).
• What’s more, Microsoft said it will keep patching the Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) on all Windows 7 machines that are eligible.

Windows Patches Zero-day Vulnerability, But Windows Still Vulnerable.

As one of the critical Windows add ons, the Windows 7 ESU updates can be applied to customers with any volume license, in spite of the size or sales channel; this is totally different from other after-life support options for Windows, which are said to be considered as part of the separately negotiated support contracts.

How Much Does It Cost to Keep Windows 7

According to Microsoft, the Extended Security Updates will be published in one-year increments for up to three years. It will be sold on the basis of device, instead of user (which has been adopted for Windows 10 licensing).

• The start price of ESU is low: $25 or $50 per device per year.
• Yet, the cost will be doubled in the second year, and then doubled in the third year.
• So in the last year, you need to pay $100 or $200 per device for the support.

Please note that there will be a price decrease for the Windows 10 Enterprise subscribers or Microsoft 365 Enterprise subscribers.

We believe that the vast majority of customers who need to purchase Windows 7 ESU will need only one year of coverage. The annual price increases help cover our additional engineering costs of providing the support and are intended to incent customers to continue their momentum on Windows 10 deployments.– according to the document.

That is to say, if a company is the customer of Windows 10 Enterprise, it needs to pay $175 for covering a single Windows 7 PC for the three years. Otherwise, the cost will be $350 per Windows 7 system. The ESU price is one of the measures that Microsoft has taken to push Windows 10 Enterprise.

With the ESU for Windows 7, the covered PCs will be able to run Office 365 ProPlus and the applications installed locally and bundled with Office 365: Outlook, Excel, Word, and so on.

If you need to recover a lost Word document, please read this:

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