Microsoft ends mainstream support for Windows Vista

Windows Vista is leaving its mainstream support phase, meaning businesses now have to pay for non-security hotfixes and incident support.

According to the support page for the ill-fated operating system, mainstream support ends on Tuesday. The extended support phase which it now enters for the next five years provides security updates, but little else, for free.

In February Microsoft introduced extended support for the consumer versions of its operating systems, so both the consumer and business iterations of Vista will be supported until April 2017.

Windows Vista was widely seen as a failure, due to both its hardware requirements — heavy, at the time of its release five years ago — and the usability and security challenges of features such as User Access Control (UAC).

Nonetheless, the latest figures from Statcounter suggest that Windows Vista still accounts for just over nine percent of active desktop operating system installations, which is still above Mac OS X's 7.3 percent. Windows 7 is on 46.5 percent and even XP, Vista's predecessor, is on 33.5 percent.

In a blog post on Monday, Microsoft reminded users that XP, along with Office 2003, will cease to be supported in two years' time.