I started at the company during the summer so I haven’t been around long but my colleague has worked there for over 10 years and my former colleague worked there for 20 years. So I think that they are probably right.

The software is also something from the past that not a lot of people use anymore. Unfortunately I can’t say what it is because people could figure out where I work very easily if I did, I believe it’s from the 80s. My company is also the company that has used this kind of system for the longest time in the world.

Fun fact: I just searched up the software/system and I found out on Wikipedia that another company in the same industry had to reverse engineer and replace the entire system because it was just too old, and hard to maintain.

With that said, some of the servers the software uses runs at least on 2012 and 2016. I haven’t checked but if it’s a VM, I should absolutely just try and replace it and see what happens.

They don’t expect home users to pay. Remember that they often refuse to even reboot their computers to receive security updates.

Extended support is pretty much intended exclusively for enterprises.

What are you complaining about then?

They supported your hardware for 18 years even when it was only meant to be for a single OS version and now people still had the option of upgrading but the hardware is just too goddamn old. I’m not defending Microsoft I also think the requirements are too high for 11, but expecting even more from your key is just ridiculous.

In a way, isn’t this just saying windows 11 is not ready as a replacement?

No, Microsoft has offered paid extended support for afaik all other windows versions at least as far back as XP.

There is always something that can’t be upgraded because it’s running some obscure software or something. At work we are unfortunately running a single Windows Server 2003 server because it’s running some software that’s absolutely critical and apparently can’t be upgraded (I should test that though).

Pretty much every hardware or software company in at least IT offers (often really expensive) extended support for old stuff.

It’s just the way of things. It isn’t an admission that Win 11 Is bad of any kind

Yeah. They have always done extended support like this.