Can you believe it’s been five years since Microsoft unleashed Windows Vista upon the general populace? Like with all operating systems released by Microsoft, it’s time for Vista to move on out to greener pastures. The greener pastures in this case is extended support as its mainstream support has now dried up.

While the news of its mainstream support ending might not be big news to most people, there are still people out there using Windows Vista for something. I’m not sure what they’re using it for, but they must have a good reason as to why they’re not using Windows 7 yet. Regardless, these people need to know what this means.

Mainstream support is essentially Microsoft’s way of keeping an operating system afloat with automatic updates and design fixes all at no charge. This was all free of charge and anybody who used the operating system could take advantage of this. All of this ends with extended support.

The only people who really should be using Vista now are those who need to make specific changes to the code. For those people, you need to buy an extended hotfix agreement which are only available for the next 90 days.

Being on extended support isn’t all bad though. You can still get security updates during this phase of phasing out Vista from the computer landscape. You’ll just have to pay for specific incident fixes if you happen to come across one.

According to the Microsoft Windows lifestyle fact sheet, extended support for Windows Vista will end on April 11, 2017. In a somewhat surprising revelation, Windows XP is still living on extended support with it drying up for the more than a decade old operating system on April 8, 2014.

Looking ahead, Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 12, 2015 with extended support ending on January 14, 2020. With the launch of Windows 8 later this year, it only makes sense for Microsoft to have these plans in place for Windows 7.

Going back to Windows Vista, however, let’s look back on the good times we had with the clunky operating system. While it wasn’t the best or the most user friendly, we can all agree that it wasn’t as bad as Windows Me.

Check out a few of the ads for Windows Vista. They should be a reminder that Microsoft got much better at making ads.

Did you like Windows Vista? Was it really as bad as people made it out to be? Let us know in the comments.

[h/t: PCWorld]