I can’t imagine how much money Microsoft has made in the last year. All of the businesses out there purging Windows XP from being used under their roof. All of the consumers running XP seeing the news of it’s end of life, and then upgrading to a newer Windows. The numbers must be astronomical for Microsoft. My fear is they might get greedy and decide to do this again but only sooner for the outstanding supported versions of Windows.

Lets look at the numbers.

  • Windows XP was released for general availability on Thursday, October 25, 2001.
  • Microsoft then ended the life of Windows XP on April 8, 2014.
  • I did a day count and it was a life cycle of 4549 days.
  • It came out to be 12 years, 5 months, 15 days of support including the end date.

This should be the new standard for support for future versions of Windows. Anything less and we will know Microsoft is trying to short it’s customers on support. Here are the general availability release dates and “should be supported” dates for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.

  • Windows Vista released January 30, 2007 should be supported to ——–> July 15, 2019
  • Windows 7 released October 22, 2009 should be supported to ——–> April 6, 2022
  • Windows 8 released October 26, 2012 should be supported to ——–> April 10, 2025 

As I mentioned my fear is that Microsoft will get greedy and start to shorten the life cycles of it’s operating systems. I predict that after they see their sales of Windows 7 and Windows 8 in the last year they will look at themselves and say “How soon can we do this again?”

Microsoft wants to be the number one king of the hill when it comes to operating systems and it is. But with that comes a responsibility and a life cycle that is neither skimped upon nor cut short.