Though most ain’t really going with the new windows 10 OS in their PCs, Microsoft, Inc. had officially announced a new policy change which is said to be a future plan for the present old boy OS (Windows 7 & 8). The laid out plans and announcement is that your new hardware won’t be able to run or support the old windows anymore. With the next AMD, Qualcomm processors and Next-generation Intel, you’ve gotta switch compulsorily to Windows 10.
When a new OS pops out like this, older PCs usually at their most fall short of minimum requirements to run such powerful software but since Microsoft is stepping in, then it’s a new story.
Hardware makers and other Microsoft partners would never be making any effort to make the new Operating system work along with old hardware devices.
The old operating systems, at best, will merely lack the latest updates. At worst, they might not function properly.

Policy starts with Intel’s current processors, Skylake

“Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support,” Microsoft made the announcement officially in a blog post which was published back on Friday.

“Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming ‘Kaby Lake’ silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming ‘8996’ silicon, and AMD’s upcoming ‘Bristol Ridge’ silicon.” The company also Added.
Although its not considered that the old OS (Windows 7, 8, 8.1) are not in support anymore, they would continue to get updates even through the 14th of January of the year 2020 and January 10th of the year 2023 respectively. But that’s only if you’re using hardware that was contemporaneous with those operating systems.

Notes for current PC owners is that the Intel’s sixth generation processors known as Skylake are the first that won’t support either older versions of windows (Intel and Microsoft say that the platform and Windows 10 were designed for each other.) Microsoft is phasing in the policy now.
So therefore, 18 months is the grace period for enterprise customers.

For the company’s all-important enterprise customers, who often lag behind on hardware and software updates in order to guarantee stability, Microsoft says it will be maintaining a list of approved Skylake systems that are guaranteed to have Windows 7 and 8.1 support through July 17, 2017. That gives companies an 18 month grace period to buy modern hardware for employees before committing and implementing upgrades to Windows 10.
When the grace period is over, only the most Critical Windows 7 and 8.1 security updates is said to be addressed for these configurations which would be released so far there isn’t any risk on reliability or compatibility of the Windows 7 & 8.1 operating system on other devices.

“Companies and consumers, of course, can still buy older PC hardware that doesn’t utilize Intel’s Skylake platform or other modern CPUs — the last generation of supported Intel processors are known as Broadwell, and those chips are still widely available.”
The new policy is putting smiles on the faces of Microsoft’s hardware partners since they are no longer gonna have to develop many expensive software updates for the older versions of Windows. Rather, Microsoft is using that opportunity to awakening the switch over to the new Windows 10 operating system.

The company sees the operating system as the final versions of Windows; rather than being a product, its now swinging to as a service which explains the main motives of Microsoft’s fulfillment of its hardware legacy obligations; that it won’t be expending resources to help users steer clear of its latest and greatest service ever.