This year, PCWorld gave thumbs up to Norton, AVG, and Trend Micro. A number of publications, including our sister pub PCWorld, conduct annual tests and make recommendations. The antivirus market has resisted the typical market consolidation that comes with a maturation cycle and there remains plenty to choose from. Yes, Microsoft has its own antimalware software, Windows Defender, but it is frequently a laggard in tests against other antivirus programs. Since so many infections take place via browser exploits, stopping use of IE is a must. Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in April 2014 but Google supported it until 2016, while Firefox hung on until 2018. Historically, Firefox and Chrome as well as laggards like Opera, Pale Moon, and Safari, hang on for at least a year when an OS sunsets, offering fixes for the old OS and the new. Microsoft makes it clear in the Windows 7 end-of-life FAQ that IE is a component of Windows and thus follows the support lifecycle of the Windows operating system it’s installed on, meaning there will be no more fixes to IE 11. There are ways to work around the end of life for Windows 7, some of which require extra work while others require extra diligence. Your PCs just won’t be protected like they should. So what’s a company to do? Well, Windows 7 will continue to work, it’s not like Microsoft will send out a kill switch. So they kept their PC off the network, did manual backups to external drives, and ran those PCs until they died. They had to buy a new version to run on Windows 7, and the software was prohibitively expensive, running into five figures. I noticed everyone from doctors to dentists to optometrists to chiropractors were all staying with Windows XP, and they all cited the same reason: Their patient database software, which was highly vertical and specialized, could not be reinstalled on a Windows 7 machine. Back when we went through the Windows XP end of life in 2014, one group that wasn’t migrating was medical professionals. For professionals, sometimes the decision isn't so easy.
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