@SergeantQueen Because my Windows 7 machine is still working very well, and I detest many things about Windows 8, 8.1, 10 and 11, including:
* The automatic update schedule that one is not allowed to turn off and handle manually.
* The huge number of updates.
* The crap the updates tend to do – resetting unwanted default settings, setting up unwanted processes, changing things I don’t want changed, breaking things that were working, not installing correctly and needing to be researched to figure out how to install them, etc.
* The updates requiring my computer to be restarted, meaning I either lose work in progress, or need to spend considerable time resetting my system to the state I do my work in, and the interruption of the processes I keep running all the time. Windows possibly rebooting for updates every day is a pain, and destroys my ability to say, leave the house for more than one night without a chance my software will get shut down by Windows updates – which is not acceptable.
* The huge amount of data sent to Microsoft, that one would need to hunt down and change, somehow, if allowed.
* The stupid mobile-device-based menus.
* The offering of lots of crap programs I don’t want on those menus, which I’d need to spend at least several hours trying to exterminate and replace with things I do care about.
* The boot “security” features that make it a bitch to dual-boot Linux (I’ve done it on other Win 8 machines – it was very annoying).
* The other random BS Microsoft changes to serve its purposes in ways I don’t like, because it has a general strategy that it can try to evolve things to suit its purposes, in the direction of MS owning and controlling what your computer does, rather than the user. There are many examples of little things like this.
* I don’t want to have to deal with any issues with software I like, not being compatible or having problems with Win 11.
* I hate some of the other new Windows “security” measures that are thicker on later versions of Windows.
“Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t you more vulnerable using older OS?”
– I might be if I were a sloppy user – someone who clicks on email attachments from strangers or clueless people, or who visits web pages that try to hack your computer, or installs software laden with malware. The last time I ran into something like that was about eight years ago, and it was on a current and updated version of Windows.
– Also, while yes in theory there may be some unpatched vulnerabilities on Win 7 that are patched on more recent versions of Windows, because of how Windows is always chock full of “enabling technologies” and bleeding edge patches that like to reset systems to default settings, and are so complex, the newer versions generally have plenty of vulnerabilities and attract attention from hackers.