News hardware Microsoft is sounding the alarm about the death of this flagship operating system

Arrived on the market in October 2013, Windows 8.1 is about to be buried definitively by Microsoft. The Redmond firm alerts owners of this OS: it is high time to upgrade to a higher version to avoid any problems.

Windows 8.1 is far, very far from being the favorite version of users of Microsoft’s operating system: as soon as it was released in October 2013, this small evolution of Windows 8 struggled to seduce the crowds, who preferred to wait for the arrival Windows 10 in July 2015.

However, there are still computers on which Windows 8.1 is used on a daily basis. The percentage is, of course, minimummost with 2.45% of machines still equipped with this version according to the StatCounter site, this still represents a lot of people. For comparison, Windows 10 remains dominant today with 71.29% market share, while Windows 11 is at 15.44%.

Support for Windows 8.1 ends in two months

Only, here it is: bad news is looming for the diehards of Windows 8.1. From January 10, 2023, there will be no more support from Microsoft for this OS. In practice, the big updates were no longer relevant since 2018, but the extended support allowing the operating system to benefit from security updates as well as technical assistance was planned for another five years.

This time, it’s good: Microsoft stops the costs. The American company will no longer offer security updates for Windows 8.1which means that its users will find themselves faced with vulnerabilities that will soon be exploited by hackers.

Windows 8.1 users are invited to turn the page

Since last July, owners of a machine running Windows 8.1 have been receiving notifications from their operating system to remind them of its impending death. The Microsoft site also recalls the situation.

“Although you can still use a PC running Windows 8.1, without software and security updates, your PC is more susceptible to viruses and malware”

The recommendation is clear: you don’t have to wait to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to a newer version of Windowsand the one that is presented as being the safest is, of course, Windows 11.

However, a size problem persists: Windows 11 requires a recent machine to operate, in particular equipped with the famous TPM 2.0 chip. In other words, a computer that is still running Windows 8.1 does not meet the minimum requirements of Windows 11 at all. This is one of the reasons why Windows 10 is still so popular today.

In sum, owners of a computer running Windows 8.1 will have to face the facts and consider changing machines in the coming months, at the risk of ending up with a version of Windows plagued by dangerous security vulnerabilities. Sometimes a little sprucing up is good.

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