Windows 7 is still a great choice if not the best choice for business applications such as 2Touch!

Microsoft has learned from the Windows XP retirement fiasco to reach out long before the situation becomes critical.  People are hearing about the end of Windows 7 sooner, but it still has plenty of life left.  This is different than the XP experience.  By the time people became aware of the end of XP, it was out of extended support.

It’s important to distinguish a valid business application platform from a consumer platform. 

Win 7 and 2TouchPOS go great together

Businesses don’t change operating systems as often as consumers do.  Reliability and maintainability are generally more important aspects than the latest feature.  Windows 7 is still available for sale for OEM and embedded systems.

There’s a significant difference between end of mainstream support and end of extended support.  Microsoft will end free mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015.  Windows 7 Extended support runs through January 14, 2020.  Extended support still includes security update support.

With Windows 7 gaining in market share (sitting over 51% right now), it's clear that most organizations have opted to skip Windows 8.   Windows 8 didn’t become a compliant platform until Windows 8.1.  By which time, talk of windows 10 was right around the corner.  It wasn’t worth the time or expense to be pa-dss validated on Windows 8.  Windows 10 is not yet stable enough for pa-dss validation.