Microsoft will end support for Windows Vista on this day next year. The company will no longer release security patches for the OS on the 11th of April 2017. Vulnerabilities and other issues will remain unfixed and computers running the OS are advised to stay away from the internet. Whether many user will care is the question, the market share of Vista is very low.
Vista will suffer the same faith as Windows XP of which support ended 2 years ago, in April 2014. The operating system will still work and won't be restricted after that date but it can no longer be considered secure. Any security leak found after the 11th of April 2017 will no longer be fixed by Microsoft.
The assumption that because Vista is less likely to be attacked because it's a lot less popular than Windows XP is wrong, according to the German website Heise. According to NetApplications only 1.41% of the computers on the internet runs Windows Vista. However, because Vista contains code that is also part of newer versions of Windows, vulnerabilities discovered in these newer versions are likely also in Vista but remain unpatched.
Users who want to upgrade their Vista system while keeping their data and settings only have the option to upgrade to Windows 7. Vista is not eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10, so users need to purchase a Windows 7 license and from there can upgrade to Windows 10 if they want. We offer a guide that shows how to upgrade from Vista to Windows 10 for less than $20. It's not possible to switch from 32-bit to 64-bit, such an upgrade requires a fresh installation.
After Vista, the end of support for Windows 7 is next, this will be at the 14th of January 2020. Then Windows 8.1 follows on the 10th of January 2023. For Windows 10, that's regularly updated, no end date is known, except for the Long Time Support (LTS) versions for which Microsoft will provide support for 10 year.
Still 10.90% of all computers connected to the internet is still running the unsupported and outdated Windows XP for which support ended 2 years ago.
