Win 7 end date to buy

To add to that, AFAIK, Win 8 uses the same drivers as 7, which are basically the same as Vista, so it's like the Win2000 to XP migration, where the driver model remained unchanged, giving kind of a false impression of a lack of drivers.

For the OP: I know it's easy to do armchair quarterbacking, but given support for XP is about to come to an abrupt end within about a years time, I would just save the money of the Windows 7 licenses and just turn around and invest that in a new set of computers once the current set has been paid for. Then you can keep the old ones around for a time, so you aren't in a mad rush to migrate data, etc, and you can give people some time to acclimate to Windows 8 because it will be a pretty big culture shock coming from XP. Some might consider that to be an understatement.

If the current units came with XP, then the hardware is probably pretty old, and it'd be time to consider upgrading. Then the company can happily rediscover it's neo-luddite ways and just sit with Windows 8 for many years to come, because it'll probably be around 2017 before MS drops all support for Win 8. Of course from a business perspective, it's a good idea to not let yourself get too far behind, otherwise you end up having issues with migrating data or getting sticker shock from having to pay full price for some new version of a vital program, the older version you have no longer working on the new OS release. You don't have to upgrade the instant something comes out, but you should try and keep within 1-2 versions of the latest as much as possible. Also have contingency plans in place for what happens if that program vendor goes under, or makes some kind of change that renders it unusable for your company, that sort of thing.

There are an estimated 15% of pc's out there still running XP.

The client I have is a small grooup of "non" pc people and they do not want to move to win7 because it is "so" different. They special ordered their Dells with XP installed at the end of that cycle...Dell Vostro 200.

The pay off on the systems are tied up in court believe it or not. They also fired thier "pc" guy. Ya gotta love it.

I thought that moving them slowly over time to win7 would be good for them and not make a big impact on thier daily work schedule. They have a need to keep their current systems for at least one more year, and maybe beyond that. I am making an effort to help them survive as a small business if you know what I mean, and at the same time build mine on foundation of my priciples.

"Change or die."

This company by not moving along with the changes may not be saved. You have to be kind about such things but if a company is that locked into a system, when the system moves on they die and another company takes its place.

There is no easy way to break the news and you might find folk defending this one way or another.

Win 7 is not so different. Apps are apps. No one I know uses the OS that much anymore.
Bob

So, no one has actually answered my original question.
Will MS pull win7 when win8 is released?
I appreciate evryone's input, but the decision is for my client to make, and if there is only a short window of time to make that decision, I want them to have that opportunity.
Thanks

So far its been 12 years and I still can buy XP CD's and licenses.

No one will answer you officially and if you can't figure out why, I can only defer you to those folk in Redmond.

You should try 10 years for the answer.
Bob