Late last year, Microsoft pulled the plug on a group of older products, including all versions of DOS, Windows 3.xx, NT 3.5x, and the seminal Windows 95--arguably the most important commercial operating system ever released.
This cessation of support wasn't a surprise: Microsoft had revealed its comprehensive "Product Lifecycle Guidelines" back in 2001. The guidelines called for older products to be phased out fairly rapidly and for newer products gradually to ramp down through diminishing levels of support as time went on. The older a product was, the fewer support options would be available for it, until it reached what Microsoft called "end of life," when all official support would stop.
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