Windows 7 still running on over 100 million PCs

Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 back in January 2020 and while it looked like the ageing OS was in decline over the course of last year, Windows 7 installs had a slight uptick in the later months of last year. At this point, it appears that at least 100 million PCs are still running Microsoft's now unsupported OS. 

As reported by ZDNet, Windows 7 is estimated to still be used by 20 percent of PCs worldwide. Based on results from different tracking companies, that means at least 100 million PCs still use Windows 7, although that number could be higher, with some trackers indicating well over 100 million Windows 7 installs. Nonetheless, a huge amount of PCs are still running outdated software, something that Microsoft will want to tackle.

Windows 7 is over a decade old at this point and Microsoft officially ended updates and security fixes in early 2020. This leaves Windows 7 machines open to zero day exploits and attacks.

With that said, Microsoft has been known to bend the rules a bit if the situation is severe enough. It would take a pretty major cybersecurity disaster to force Microsoft to revisit such an old piece of software at this point though, meaning many would be better off simply updating their PCs to a more secure, supported operating system to avoid issues in the future.

KitGuru Says: Windows 7 installs seemed to be falling last year but we ended 2020 with a slight increase in the number of tracked active systems. Do you all think people will ever stop using Windows 7? What would it take to push the last remaining users to switch to Windows 10?

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