April 11th 2017 marks the passing of an old friend, or for some, a troublesome adversary. Windows Vista was the follow on from the much loved XP that it now joins in the great software graveyard.
Unlike XP, Vista was fraught with issues that affected performance and stability. There was the famous “black screen of death” that confused and confounded users and in most cases required expert assistance to resolve. Vista brought many software compatibility issues for those migrating systems from XP. The upgrade often ended up with the user doing a clean install of Vista.
As of April 11th there will be no further updates from Microsoft and that means there will ultimately be security issues and third party software vendors will gradually cease support.
And so to those of you with a Vista based laptop or desktop system. There’s probably still life to be lived. The options are quite simple.
Firstly, do nothing and carry on as normal. But do ensure that your critical data is safe by backing up or copying to an external storage device. Most third party security products will continue to work for a year or so as they did when XP expired.
Next, why not consider installing Windows 7? It is similar to Vista in many ways and the computer is almost certain to be capable of running 7. The cost of a new license will be a lot less than the cost of a new system and Mayday can help with the process. Windows 7 support is scheduled to continue until January 2020.
Or finally, it may be time to consider investing in the future. Buy a new system or consider whether you could work with a tablet.
Whatever you choose to do or if you would like to discuss any of the issues covered here, why not get in touch. Mayday – here to help.
