You may have heard Windows 7’s free support ends on January 2020. Those who couldn’t upgrade by this date – or didn’t want to – breathed a sigh of relief when Microsoft said it was still offering three years of support updates on a paid basis called Extended Security Updates (ESU).
However, Windows 7 users may not be as thrilled to hear the price of these updates will be doubling in price each year. For organizations already subscribing to Windows Enterprise, the first year will cost an additional $25 per device. This doubles to $50 for the second year, and $100 for the third year.
If you were thinking about skipping a year, no dice. Previous years must be paid for to obtain the year two or year three support.
For businesses sticking with Windows Pro instead of Windows Enterprise, the cost is substantially more: you’ll be paying $50 per device for the first year, $100 for the second and then $200 for the third.
According to Peter Bright of Ars Technica, Microsoft is “no doubt” hoping the pricing serves as an incentive for organizations to switch to Windows Virtual Desktop for their Windows 7 systems.
“These cloud-hosted virtual machines will receive the Windows 7 ESU updates at no extra cost beyond the basic license, plus the cost of the virtual machine they run on,” he said.
