Microsoft has finally announced today that it will be ending all additional support for their two-decades-old operating system, Windows Vista. Those who are still running the operating system are advised to immediately upgrade to newer operating system versions, namely Windows 7 and above, in order to receive further security patches and system updates.

The end of support for Windows Vista basically means that Microsoft will no longer be proving any technical support should there be any more problems with the system. Additionally, any security exploits or holes in the system will no longer be patched. Those who continue to use the system may be vulnerable to future attacks that take advantage of the system's different exploits.

Windows Vista, also known as "Longhorn," was released worldwide back in January 2007. As per a report from GSM Arena, the OS was meant to be the successor of the highly popular Windows XP, which was released back in 2001. Unfortunately, instead of being a revolutionary new step in the Windows series, the particular operating was met with a lot of criticism.

According to Blasting News, Vista was perhaps one of Microsoft's most controversial operating systems. The OS was apparently full of bugs, glitches, and issues that frustrated a lot of users. Microsoft also embedded a number of user interface changes that were too ahead of its time. Due to features such as Windows Aero, Aero Peek, and Windows Widgets, the operating system was very CPU and GPU intensive.

The majority of the hardware back then was really not equipped to run the new operating system properly. Even most of the dual-core CPU computers were inadequate to run the system. Vista was also apparently criticized for its pricing, which was apparently too expensive for most users.

Due to its numerous issues and hardware requirements, a lot of users opted to skip upgrading to the new OS and stayed with the stable Windows XP version instead.