When an operating system reaches a certain age, the developer no longer provides security patches or support for it, and we can no longer use it at UB for information security and legal compliance reasons.

Most of the university’s staff and faculty run Windows 7, which is seven years old – and will only be supported for a bit more than three years.  Proactively, to avoid the large rush we had for the move off of Windows XP, IT has begun rolling out Windows 10.

But the big question that everybody wants to be answered: what does Windows 10 do for you?  While many of the upgrades are pretty technical and deep under the hood – for instance, the massive security improvements, one of the changes you’ll see on campus is the ability to use many of the innovative form factors of computers: Convertible tablets, all-in-ones with touch and pen input, pure tablets, and the like.  Previously these were very uncommon, but expect to be seeing more of them (possibly on your desk!).

Another major and much asked for change is the way updates are handled.  In Windows 7, the update time was fixed and could cause your computer to restart overnight without warning.  Additionally, some updates would have to wait weeks until the software could be patched – such as Adobe Flash and Oracle Java, causing work stoppages and frustration.  Windows 10 has intelligent update handling, which means it restarts when you’re not using it, and gives plenty of warning so that you can save your work – and at the same time, smaller updates can be rolled out faster, so you’re not left waiting for that critical update to visit a website.

If your computer hasn’t been upgraded to Windows 10 yet, you can put in a case with our helpdesk to see if your computer is compatible or find out when your computer is up for replacement.