Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I read that there are still 2.7 million computers running Windows 7 in Germany alone. These devices, a security firm warns, are at high risk of being infected by all sorts of viruses, Trojans, or other malicious software. It is irresponsible to use such outdated systems.
Windows 7 has not been supported by Microsoft for several years. If a software company no longer supports a certain program, this means that this software can still run on a computer, but no more updates will be released. It may be that a new type of virus simply hops over the firewall or that an error is no longer corrected.
There are also several hundred thousand Microsoft customers who are in an even worse mood: They use the much older products Windows XP and Windows Vista. I even have a computer running Windows 95 somewhere. If I switched it on, the whole of Germany would probably black out.
The question now is why Windows customers are sticking with their old systems. I guess because they work. I myself am a Microsoft user of the older generation and I can remember that this was not necessarily the case with the Windows predecessors.
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For a long time, many Microsoft founders considered Bill Gates to be a villain who used his monopoly position to force holey operating systems on people. Windows users knew the gruesome stare at the hourglass icon that indicated the computer has probably crashed – along with hours’ work.
No need for experiments
However, over time the systems have improved and apparently some customers are so satisfied with Windows 7 that they have no need for new experiments, even though Windows 11 already exists. I understand that well, I myself am afraid of every update on my mobile phone, because afterwards a handful of apps no longer work. You then have to renew them, but some of them don’t have a new version. Then they’re just broken.
Sure, there are better apps out there now. But I don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want anything new, why can’t this be understood as a consumer need?
I have read that you can unfortunately make yourself punishable by doing so. Anyone using Windows 7 on a commercial computer may be in breach of the European General Data Protection Regulation. This stipulates that the use of personal data must be state-of-the-art.
So that’s it. It is a criminal offense not to have bought anything new. I expect to be arrested soon for still using an iPhone 7.
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