Windows 7 will be a decade old when Microsoft discontinues support for the legacy OS on January 14, 2020. Leading up to that date, the company is planning to once again badger Windows 7 users to upgrade to Windows 10 by pinging them with notifications.
"Beginning next month, if you are a Windows 7 customer, you can expect to see a notification appear on your Windows 7 PC. This is a courtesy reminder that you can expect to see a handful of times in 2019," Microsoft states in a blog post.
Microsoft says its hope is that by dishing out the reminders around nine months in advance that Windows 7 users will have ample time to "plan and prepare for this transition."
The good news is, you could potentially only see the notification once. Microsoft says there will be an option to "do not notify me again," and assuming Microsoft/Windows respects that decision, you won't receive any further reminders.
According to Microsoft, there are now more than 800 million devices running Windows 10. The company originally hoped to reach 1 billion devices within the first 2-3 years, but that proved to be a bit ambitious.
It's not clear how many people are still using Windows 7, but the available data suggests it's still a lot. StatCounter, for example, pegs the usage rate of Windows 7 among Windows systems at nearly 34 percent. That's well below the nearly 55 percent share that Windows 10 holds, but is not an insignificant chunk.
