Microsoft announced that as of Monday they have sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses worldwide since its release in October 2009.
While that is great news for the company, they also discussed their Windows 8 OS during a Worldwide Partner Conference, but only briefly, as more will be revealed later on in the year.
Why all the fanfare over Windows 7? Besides the growth, the company also wants people to ditch XP for 7, because Microsoft announced that customers now have 1,000 days until the company stops supporting Windows XP.
According to Erwin Visser, senior director for the Windows Commercial Product Marketing team “Windows XP served us well, but in the ten years since it launched, the world has changed. It’s time to retire Windows XP and move to Windows 7 to take advantage of the last decade of innovation in areas such as security, performance and more natural, intuitive interface.”
How will this work, since the two OS are not really compatible with each other? Microsoft lauded the cloud-based service Intune can help users manage and secure their computers from any location.
“Windows Intune has proven to be the comprehensive solution [partners and customers] need, giving them cloud services for PC management and security and upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise (and future versions of Windows) from a single, simple subscription,” said Visser.
It sounds like Microsoft is trying to help the demise of XP by providing tools to help people make the transfer.
Many XP users stuck with the venerable operating system after downgrading from the failed Windows Vista a few years ago.
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