Flying Fox wrote:Actually, if Win8+1 or Win8+2 turns out to be popular, they will try to push those instead. So I would not count on 7 enjoying the same leniency as XP.
They can try to push whatever they want but they can't afford to lose the business market, especially now that mobile devices are taking over in the consumer sector and fewer consumers are purchasing the magic Windows/Office combination. Remember how many times they tried to kill XP, but couldn't? After all was said and done, the absolute, EOL, drop-dead, We're-Really-Not-Kidding-This-Time date for ending XP security updates was...April of
this year. Keep in mind the RTM of Vista, which was intended to replace it, was Fall 2006 and the RTM of Windows 7, which actually has replaced it, was Fall of 2009.
Windows 8 is a moderately better OS "under the hood" and Microsoft may be able to get business-market adoption if they can suck in their pride and roll back the Metro nonsense far enough on some future "Enterprise" release, but if I had to bet the farm, I would lay odds on another service pack (in practical reality, if not in name) for Windows 7 that covers at least the Pro/Enterprise versions.