Microsoft To End Windows 8 Security Updates January 12

As you might have heard, in January of last year, Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows 7. Now if you have long upgraded to Windows 8, the bad news is that your time has come. Just to remind you guys, Windows 8’s security updates will be coming to an end on the 12th of January, 2016.

Now you might be wondering, isn’t Windows 8 still “new”? After all it was released in 2012, and Microsoft typically offers at least 10 years worth of support before ending it. However it seems that this is due to the unique nature of Windows 8 and 8.1, in which the difference in versions is pretty big, so much so that even amongst trackers, they distinguish between Windows 8 and 8.1

That being said given the issues many have had with Windows 8, it would be safe to say that users would have gladly upgraded to at least 8.1, but for those who didn’t, security updates for the operating system will end tomorrow. However if you were to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or even Windows 10, note that support will be extended to 2023 for the former.

In addition to ending security updates for Windows 8, just last week Microsoft also announced that they will be ending support for older builds of Internet Explorer, namely versions 8, 9, and 10 which all come to an end also on the 12th of January.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Microsoft, Windows 8