In its latest drive to push Windows 10 adoption further, Microsoft announced that nextgen CPUs will only support Windows 10. Elaborating more on the announcement made, Microsoft published a list of more than 100 Skylake Systems that will be capable of offering Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support – until July 17, 2017.
Which Skylake systems will be supported on Windows
Although there will be no requirement for users to upgrade to Windows 10 following the above-mentioned date, failing to upgrade will mean loss of support. That said, there will be still dozens of systems from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC that can be setup with the older operating systems.
In exchange of the above support, OEMs have committed to additional testing, regular validation of Windows Updates, and publishing drivers and firmware for Windows 10 on Windows Update, which will help unlock the security and power management benefits of Windows 10, once the systems are upgraded.
What are Skylake systems
Skylake is Intel’s 6th generation of processors which include chips with either two cores or four cores. This manufacture helps the machine CPU deliver up to 2.5 times faster processing performance, manifolds better graphics performance, and up to 3 times better battery life than its earlier generation chips.
Microsoft’s new policy for Intel Skylake Systems
Skylake supports hardware offloading for voice activation, something of immense use while using the service of the digital assistant in Windows 10 – Cortana and Windows Hello, the most recent authentication system in Windows 10 that works closely with Intel’s RealSense cameras.
Making new hardware work with older versions of Windows is painful. As such, the company and its partners are not interested in putting insane amounts of work needed for doing so. Consequently, users running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 will have to think about upgrading to Windows 10 within a period of 18 months since, Microsoft announced after July 17, 2017, only the “most critical” security fixes will be released for those platforms, and those will be released if the update does not risk the reliability or compatibility of the Windows 8.1/7 platform on other devices.
The company will be maintaining a list of approved Skylake systems that are assured to receive continued Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 support through July 17th, 2017.
Please bear in mind, companies and consumers, of course will still be in a position to buy older PC hardware that doesn’t utilize Intel’s Skylake platform or other modern CPUs.
Currently there are over 100 models listed in the database. This page displays links for each company – and directs you to the support sites for the listing of devices, currently under the support policy from Microsoft.
