Microsoft continues to let OEMs sell PCs running the business edition.

That increasing share may not bother office 2010 home and student , however it should businesses that decommissioned Windows XP PCs and replaced all of them with Windows 7 systems, ignoring Windows 8. With Windows 7's life half over, those enterprises now have five years to complete a transition to another OS, probably Windows 10, the upgrade Microsoft will release this fall.

Five months ago, actually, Gartner began urging corporations to start their post Windows 7 planning when they desired to prevent a recurrence of the end of Windows XP's support, when many needed to either hustle to make the support deadline, or worse, continued running the over 60's OS after patching ended.

"While this feels like it's a long way off, organizations has to start planning now," said Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Stephen Kleynhans in August.

And the failure of Windows 8 to win enterprise minds and hearts has established one oddity: Even though buy windows 7 home premium has made mid-life, Microsoft continues to let OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) sell PCs running the business edition.

Microsoft has yet to name an end date for OEM sales of machines run by cheap Windows 10 Pro . But because it has promised a 12-month notice, those PCs can still be sold at least until early January 2016, when the OS has but four years of life left.