Support for Windows Vista Ended Yesterday

This week marked something very important for the folks out there who don’t believe in buying a new Windows operating system each time a new flavor comes out. Many PC users simply soldier on with operating systems like XP and Vista on their PCs. While Windows XP ended support a long time ago, the official end of support date for Vista was April 11- yesterday reports The Verge.

The official end of support for the OS came over ten years after it first debuted. With support now over, this means that if you want to keep getting security updates and patches for your computer, you will have to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows. Microsoft threw Windows users a bone after Windows 8 was so unloved by end users and offered a free upgrade to Windows 10.

Vista wasn’t a popular operating system and came to market amidst strife and criticism. Development of Vista was problematic for Microsoft with it having to refocus on shipping a stable version of the OS and losing some of its most anticipated features like the new WinFS file system. One of the Vista features that survives today in later versions of Windows is the Aero user interface called Windows Aero or Aero Glass.

That feature turned the edges of your windows opaque so you could see through them and Vista introduced a sidebar with quick access to widgets for tasks. The problem early on with Aero was that the Aero interface was particularly slow to run on older hardware. Many also had issues with overly aggressive user account control prompts from Windows, which were eventually reduced. If you are using Vista, no security updates can be a big deal and leave you unprotected against new threats.