Got Your Windows 10 For Free? German Govt Didn’t, And Will Cost Them $887,000

We had an idea that the PC-era as we knew it was going to change significantly once the support for Windows 7 ended last week. Microsoft is understandably going to focus on developing the Windows 10 operating system, which meant that the 11-year journey is now over for Windows 7 as the official support would no longer be available for the operating system. However, the German government didn’t upgrade their PCs to Windows 10 and are now looking at a massive bill to keep these PCs running. German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that there are at least 33,000 PCs that need to be secured, which means the German authorities will now have to pay a sum to the tune of 800,000 Euros (around $887,000) to secure these PCs.

Even though the support for Windows 7 ceased to exist last week and that Microsoft won’t will no longer be releasing any public security updates and fixes for Windows 7, there are enterprises and businesses who still haven’t migrated to Windows 10. The reasons could be many. An unwillingness to upgrade or the IT team being lazy, are some usual suspects. These organizations now have the option to pay for what Microsoft calls Extended Security Updates (ESU) to keep these business and enterprise focused versions of Windows 7 secure and running, at least for the near future.

Also Read | End of The Road For Windows 7; We Hope You Got Your Free Windows 10 Upgrade

There are two flavors of Windows 7 that might be requiring support across businesses. Large organizations usually run the Windows 7 Enterprise edition, and the extended updates for this cost around $25 per machine. Remember, this will be $50 per device in 2021 and will be further revised to $100 in 2022. Then there is Windows 7 Pro users, which is usually used by smaller businesses, home and home office users as well as startups. The extended updates for this version of Windows 7 will cost around $50 per machine. Remember though, this will increase to $100 in 2021 and then to $200 in 2022. If your business boffins are good, they may be able to negotiate a better deal with Microsoft. But don’t bet on it, because if they were, they would have upgraded to Windows 10 long before the deadline day for Windows 7.

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