Windows 7 is dead. How it became the best and why it has remained so until now

Standard support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020, however, the system continued to receive ESU Extended Security Updates (in Professional and Enterprise editions) until January 10, 2023 – on this day its life cycle completely ceased and the platform became officially dead. Finally. Surprisingly, back in July 2022, it was ahead of Windows 11 in terms of popularity, and in December it was not significantly inferior to it (11.2% versus 16.97% according to Statcounter).

Why has Windows 7 become so popular? Or rather, why is it that a 13-year-old system that is by all means obsolete and largely unsupported for several years still retains a substantial user base? In this article, we look into these issues – some of the answers may seem obvious, but the totality of factors has already entered into history and will certainly be remembered more than once.

Windows 7 (or any other in its place) was waiting even before the announcement

One of the key factors behind the huge popularity of Windows 7 is, in fact, the failure of Windows Vista that preceded it. On most computers, it worked very buggy, especially against the backdrop of a stable and smooth (if you can describe the interface of that time) Windows XP. The reason is that Microsoft was led by Intel and artificially lowered the system requirements of the system in order to support popular processors at that time, which is why the market was flooded with computers that were in fact incompatible with the new platform. In addition to this, Vista received a very annoying innovation – an overly intrusive User Account Control (UAC) security system that requires you to enter an administrator password at literally every corner.

As a result, the user experience was, to put it mildly, not the best: either the system was very buggy and slow, or annoyed by the new protection technology, or all of these at once. As a result, users were waiting for a new operating system that would replace the unsuccessful Vista and become a fresh alternative to XP, which was already outdated at that time. Thanks to this, it is not at all surprising that Windows 7 had a strong start, although it also did not go very smoothly – at first the system was full of bugs, but they were fixed relatively quickly.

Users were also bribed by the fact that the “Seven” became the first in the history of Windows, which did not increase the system requirements compared to its predecessor. On the contrary, it even somewhat lowered them: the requirements for the processor and RAM were the same, and the minimum required hard disk space was reduced. As a result, people who have already upgraded computers to Vista or simply upgraded their hardware since Windows XP could, without much risk, buy new system.

Why Windows 7 is so loved

It turned out exactly as expected – it combined all the innovations from Vista, but lost its shortcomings. But the “Seven” was not just a modified version of its predecessor, although this is partly what happened. In general, there were quite a few notable innovations in Windows 7.

• Ribbon Interface
  The now familiar menu of buttons under the top border of the window, sorted by category and divided into tabs, did not always exist – this idea made its debut in Windows 7.
  
• Improved taskbar
  The ability to pin icons at the bottom of the screen at first seemed unnecessary to users, but everything changed after just a few days of use – it turned out to be extremely convenient to launch other programs without leaving the desktop. The same can be said about the ability to preview the window of a minimized application by hovering over its icon on the taskbar.
  

• Snap windows to screen sides
  The ability to drag a window to the edge of the screen to snap it at half size is one of Microsoft’s best ideas. Until now, in the same macOS, there is nothing like that, which regularly becomes the object of jokes in Internet disputes. In Windows 7, this was implemented both beautifully and conveniently (from the very beginning, keyboard shortcuts were also supported), and thoughtfully (which is only the gesture of shaking the window in the foreground, leading to the minimization of all other applications).
  

• Automatic driver download
  This change under the hood has become an indisputable advantage of the new operating system – storing disks and flash drives with drivers, as well as searching for and downloading them from the Internet, are forever a thing of the past, since the system itself in almost all cases determined the equipment connected to it and downloaded the necessary drivers.
• A compromise between safety and comfort
  “User Account Control” (UAC), which became one of the key shortcomings of Vista, has not gone away (to this day), but it has been significantly redesigned – Windows 7 began to require the administrator password to be entered only in the most necessary cases, thanks to which the system remained safe and comfortable to use.

The innovations described above are just the tip of the iceberg of changes, the most noticeable. But there were other advantages in the “Seven” that made a tangible contribution to its popularity. Among these, it is impossible not to note the technology of backward compatibility with Vista. Firstly, developers did not have to adapt their devices (through drivers) and applications to the new system – Windows 7 supported everything that was created under Vista (and by the time the new platform was released, there were already many such devices and programs). Secondly, the technology for fixing compatibility problems was built into the system – it allowed “executing a program designed for previous Windows” in a couple of clicks through the right-click context menu. Third, editions of Windows 7 Professional and above supported true virtualization of Windows XP to run older programs.

Why Windows 7 is still popular

The 11.2% mentioned at the beginning of the article among all versions of Windows is not a very bright indicator of popularity. But only until the realization that this operating system is more than 13 years old, that it has not been fully supported for a long time, and that 3-4 major updates came out after it. Why is she still so popular? There is no single answer, but based on a study of the forums, one can trace the factors, each of which (one or in conjunction with others) keeps users on the Seven.

• Dissatisfaction with new versions of Windows
  The successor to Windows 7 was Windows 8, an unsuccessful system that needs no introduction (this is when the joke arose that successful and failed versions of Windows have alternated in a row since Windows 98). People got burned by the update, especially against the background of the very successful Windows 7, and decided to stay on it as long as possible.

  In addition, even the new Windows 10 and 11 are far from ideal, both for objective reasons (flaws in the interface) and for subjective ones (not everyone likes the same new Start menu in the center).

• Aggressive telemetry collection
  It’s no secret that new versions of Windows actively collect user data and send it to Microsoft servers – you can manage some of it even during the installation of the system. Judging by the comments, many people do not agree to put up with such surveillance by another large corporation from the United States and intend to stay on the old platform, where it was simply not provided (at least in such numbers).
• Compatible with older devices and apps
  Windows 10 also has compatibility technologies with older systems, but in some cases they do not do their job. On the forums, one cannot help but stumble upon reviews from owners of specific, narrowly focused programs or devices that do not support new systems. For example, one ZDNet reader is still tied to Windows 7 because his CNC milling machine is not compatible with newer platforms.

In fact, there are quite a few reasons to stay on Windows 7 – there are also the most unusual ones, like attachment to the old Windows Media Player and unwillingness to abandon it (or unwillingness to suffer with the installation of its port).

The success of Windows 7 is a happy coincidence

There is a funny analogy on the Internet: the situation with Windows 7 resembles a sandwich – “Seven” acts as a cutlet, which is pressed on both sides by pieces of bread in the face of unsuccessful Vista and Windows 8. If not for these “pieces of bread”, thanks to which the system so quickly fell in love and so firmly stuck in the heart, it would hardly have become as popular if it had at least three times more innovations (after all, all or almost all of its innovations are in subsequent versions of the system).

This proves the example of other platforms, because no version of Android, Linux or macOS fit into the history of operating systems as much as Windows 7 did. But Windows XP fit in almost the same, because it was also good in itself and was between the failed Windows ME and Vista, but … that’s another story.