Microsoft's official support for its Windows Vista operating system with the first service pack has now officially ended. As noted on the Windows support web site, the official support for that version of the OS ended on Tuesday: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/end-support
People who are still using Windows Vista with SP1 installed are now advised to upgrade to the second service pack for the OS if they want to continue to receive updates that will protect and fix Vista from exploits and bugs.

While Windows Vista SP2 will continue to be supported by Microsoft for some time, the official Windows blog site: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/07/12/end-of-support-for-windows-vista-sp1.aspx still recommends that anyone that is still running a PC on Vista to make the big upgrade to the current version of the OS, Windows 7. As we reported earlier this week, an even older version of the operating system, Windows XP, now has less than 1,000 days of official support before Microsoft retires that OS.

Windows Vista launched in early 2007 for consumers after a long time period between Vista's release and the release of Windows XP, However the operating system turned out to be something of a disappointment for many users due to bugs and lack of third party driver support at first. Microsoft quickly released Windows 7 in the fall of 2009 which was much more popular. In the latest Steam hardware survey, It shows that Windows 7 is being used by nearly half of all Steam users: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
However PCs with Vista installed only account for less than 25 percent of Steam users.

(NW)


Download Vista's SP 2: http://scforum.info/index.php/topic,2398.0.html