Microsoft Revises Support Policy For Skylake Devices

Earlier this year in January, Microsoft outlined a support plan for devices powered by Intel Skylake processors. The plan was aggressive, particularly for enterprise customers, with many taking the company’s “recommendation” as a push towards Windows 10. It said back then that next-gen processors from the likes of AMD and Intel, even Skylake, will not have support for any version of Windows other than Windows 10 with the exception of a few PCs.

Microsoft said in January that it would only support a list of specific PCs on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 through July 2017 and that all customers purchasing devices based on Skylake or newer processors would need to run Windows 10.

The change would have affected business and enterprise customers more as opposed to you and I. They don’t just up and switch the operating system for the entire organization, these things take time, and Microsoft has heard from its business customers to revise the support policy for Skylake-based devices.

In order to provide flexibility to customers who have longer deployment timeframes to Windows 10, Microsoft is increasing support period for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on Skylake from July 17, 2017, to July 17, 2018. Following July 17, 2018, the company will release all critical security updates for these operating systems until extended support for Windows 7 ends on January 17, 2020, and for Windows 8.1 on January 10, 2023.

Microsoft has also put together a Q&A on this topic to help its business customers better understand these changes as they prepare to move to Windows 10 a few years down the line.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: Microsoft, skylake, Windows 10, windows 7, windows 8.1