Eagle Business Management Software

[Neto]

....
There isn't a very sound software engineering reason to write software that works on Windows 10 but doesn't work on Windows 7.

I am not a programmer, so I can't say what technical reasons they may or may not have, but although I of course have no proof of this, I see their motivation as primarily economic in nature. I have told people who ask me about Win 7 vs OS 10 that I have never seen any company try so hard to kill off one of their own products. Nor have I before seen the cooperation of hardware manufacturers in that quest. (For instance, Intel appears to be on board with this, because Gen 7 was the last generation of processors that can officially be used with Windows 7. And mother board manufactures are also on board with this, because the 300 chipset series boards will not support any CPUs prior to Gen 8. So it's pretty difficult not to even source the hardware needed to build a Windows 7 system, at least not with the major brands.)

[QuietObserver]

They drank the Microsoft coolaide.

You can update to Windows 10 for free, so...

I noticed you didn't say upgrade.

Windows 8 was so bad, Windows 10 seemed pretty good. I do miss the start menu and control panel in Windows 7. I’ve been using Windows 10 for three years so I guess I’ve become used to it.

[Josh]

Microsoft simply doesn’t want to support obsolete versions of software. Making security updates is particularly expensive and difficult.

EBMS is a different story.

[Neto]

Microsoft simply doesn’t want to support obsolete versions of software. Making security updates is particularly expensive and difficult.

EBMS is a different story.

What reason was there for Windows 7 to be made obsolete?

[Josh]

Microsoft simply doesn’t want to support obsolete versions of software. Making security updates is particularly expensive and difficult.

EBMS is a different story.

What reason was there for Windows 7 to be made obsolete?

Same reasons as Windows 98 SE or Macintosh System 7.

With Windows 7 in particular, it’s very expensive to keep issuing security updates, forever, for free. And its architecture makes it harder to deliver complex updates in place. Windows 10 is much easier to deliver significant security updates to the entire installation base.

If you can remember the Windows XP days, computers with viruses and other security problems were very common. The landscape for cybersecurity is even tougher now that it was then, so the work operating system vendors have to do is also more complex.

Windows 7 is over 10 years old. Anyone is free to keep using it, though. I would just recommend to keep it off the Internet to avoid security problems.

For comparison, Windows 1.0 was supported for 16 years (1985 - 2001). That was back before the Internet connected era.

[Neto]

Microsoft simply doesn’t want to support obsolete versions of software. Making security updates is particularly expensive and difficult.

EBMS is a different story.

What reason was there for Windows 7 to be made obsolete?

Same reasons as Windows 98 SE or Macintosh System 7.

With Windows 7 in particular, it’s very expensive to keep issuing security updates, forever, for free. And its architecture makes it harder to deliver complex updates in place. Windows 10 is much easier to deliver significant security updates to the entire installation base.

If you can remember the Windows XP days, computers with viruses and other security problems were very common. The landscape for cybersecurity is even tougher now that it was then, so the work operating system vendors have to do is also more complex.

Windows 7 is over 10 years old. Anyone is free to keep using it, though. I would just recommend to keep it off the Internet to avoid security problems.

For comparison, Windows 1.0 was supported for 16 years (1985 - 2001). That was back before the Internet connected era.

I was still using the CPM OS back in 1985 (and DEK at work). Went to MS-DOS in Dec 1990. First exposure to Windows was 3.1.1, in 1995. (Had a free upgrade to Windows 95.) I set up that system with a boot menu, and usually just used DOS (6.1, as I recall). Got a computer from Esh Computer in 97, running Win 95, which I soon updated to Windows 97SE. 2003 bought a Dell running XP, put it back to 97SE until I started using flash drives. I still have that Dell, still running XP. I'll keep on running my 'internet system' on Win 7. If you follow Microsoft's recommendations to stay out of the Administrator account while connected and don't enter the Admin password for stuff you don't know what is, you are fine. This system DOES get the security updates, but I have no antivirus, and people can say what ever they want, but the proof is in the pudding - no infections, ever. (Well, I SAID that it is getting the security updates, but apparently when I reimaged after an HDD failure in January of last year, I must have turned it off. None since January 8, 2018. I'll consider turning it back on, but it's running clean as a whistle.)

[Josh]

Here’s another way to put it: an operating system is a depreciating asset that is fully depreciated by 10 years. You can buy ongoing support after that, but it gets very expensive.

If you don’t want to deal with the nuisances of a commercial OS, you could use something like Linux or BSD, which has extremely long term support.

[Neto]

I use OEM licenses for all of the systems I build, so Microsoft doesn't provide any support anyway, other than the updates, if a person wants them. I know that obsolescence is coming, but mostly because of the trend for software providers to no longer write their programs for operation in the Win 7 environment. (Naturally, Microsoft is first on that wagon, with Office 2019 not working on Win 7 systems.)

But getting back to EBMS, they are essentially following Microsoft's lead - moving toward computing as a service. (First step, subscription plans, second step, thin clients which only operate when connected to their servers.)

[Josh]

Most software vendors have switched to a cloud based web application model anyway. (The first big vendor to do this successfully was probably Salesforce.com.)

If I can think of any OS vendor who pushed back on this, it would be Apple - they’ve really promoted local thick apps on iPhone and iPad. Of course, Apple encourages regular OS updates too.

If you actually develop much software these days, you can appreciate how hard supporting old platforms is. I regularly have to write software which can deploy on CentOS 6.9, and it can be a real nuisance at times.