Microsoft Windows 7 or 8.1 users on Intel Kaby Lake or AMD Ryzen CPUs will not be able to download Windows updates.
Microsoft announced some time ago that new silicon as the company called it back then would not be officially supported on Windows 7 or 8.1.
This meant basically that only Windows 10 would support Intel's, AMD's and Qualcomm's new processors, while Windows 7 or 8.1 would not.
This does not mean that Windows 7 or 8.1 won't install on machines running these new processors, but that Microsoft (and the manufacturer) won't offer any form of support for those devices.
A new support page on the Microsoft website suggests that users who run an unsupported processor on an older version of Windows -- read Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 -- won't be able to scan for or download Windows updates anymore.
Users will get the following error message when they run the scan:
Unsupported Hardware
Your PC uses a processor that isn't supported on this version of Windows and you won't receive updates.
It looks like I'll be moving to BSD or Linux sooner than I planned.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:23PM
Umm, most tablets run Android/Linux these days.
and the iThingies, don't forget them, they run some sort of fscked-about-with BSD under all the ooooh shiny!, buts shh, don't tell anyone..
In fact, the only tablets I've heard about which don't run any sort of Unix/Linux derivative are those Surface things, and I've not seen one IRL...
Personally, If I had to use one, I'd rather have a tablet running an OS with Unix rather than VMS lurking in it's DNA, but as I hate the fscking things in general, I'll stick with my netbook for 'portable computing' (Dual boot Win7/Kali).