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Microsoft Pulls The Plug On Windows 7, 8.1 Support Forums

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 13 2018, @05:52PM   
from the so-long,-farewell dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Holdouts to Windows 7, 8.1, and 8.1 RT won't be able to ping Microsoft's own forums for tech support from the company anymore.

The Redmond software behemoth announced on Friday that, come next month, its staff will no longer be combing the official forums for 13 outdated products to offer support advice and assistance. Users will still be able to access the forums and get advice from each one, albeit without feedback from a Microsoft employee.

"There will be no proactive reviews, monitoring, answering or answer marking of questions," Microsoft said in announcing the move.

[...] Customers are still able to get paid support from Microsoft through to the end of the extended support periods.

In addition to the three outdated versions of Windows, Microsoft is pulling the plug on official forum support for the Office 2010 and 2013, IE 10, Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT and Surface 2, and Security Essentials. As with Windows 7 and 8.1, those products are all past their official support lifecycle as well.

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Original Submission

• Plus ca change Plus ca change (Score: 5, Touché) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday June 13 2018, @06:14PM (2 children)

  by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday June 13 2018, @06:14PM (#692435) Journal

  Users will still be able to access the forums and get advice from each one, albeit without feedback from a Microsoft employee.

  So, nothing really changing there, then.

  --
  This sig for rent.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+3
  Informative=1, Touché=2, Total=3
  Extra 'Touché' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		5

• Re:Plus ca change (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday June 13 2018, @06:26PM

  by frojack (1554) on Wednesday June 13 2018, @06:26PM (#692449) Journal

  Nothing of value was lost.

  Microsoft's forums were never the principal source of trouble shooting anyway, there are a hundred other forums for more reliable information.

  All 39 people running Windows 8.1 may be dismayed. But the truth is the free "upgrade" (cough) to Windows 10 works better on any hardware capable of running windows 8.1 than 8.1 itself.

  Windows 7, on the other hand really was one of the best versions of windows (faint praise, I know) ever produced. But most of its foibles are well understood by now and adequately documented on the internet.

  --
  No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.

  Parent

• Improvement actually (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:47AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:47AM (#692793)

  Actually it's an improvement. In my experience in too many cases the "answers" from Microsoft employees were unhelpful, offtopic or even stupid. If you were cynical like me it would seem that many were just answering for the sake of satisfying certain job metrics/quotas.
  
  In most cases it's some MVP or Microsoft partner who is not a Microsoft employee that makes a useful helpful comment. They're answering because they actually understood the question and they actually know about the topic (e.g. they actually use the stuff).
  
  Since so many Microsoft employees were in a habit of posting even when they had nothing useful to add it will be a good thing once they all stop posting in those forums.
  
  You're more likely to get useful stuff from Microsoft employees from their blogs (blogs.technet etc)- e.g. when they post stuff on topics that actually interest them.

  Parent