+1 on Windows doing this for forever. I regularly use devices that are 10+ years old: printer (10), scanner (11), webcam (10), professional audio interface (12). I can stil install old music software to work with old songs I've recorded/produced.
Every Windows machine but 1 in my house is >5 years old. The 1 that is newer was just built this year to replace a machine with an >11 year old motherboard (CPU/RAM had been upgraded since). It does help that I went 100% SSD and touch (for laptops) when Windows 8 came out.
I don't think there will ever be another OS that has the same level of backwards compatibility that Windows does. It is just too hard. Support longer than iOS on an ecosystem more diverse than Android. Windows users expect it though.
And every new release of windows things break for some group of users, people complain about how quality control at microsoft has really gone downhill lately, and microsoft rolls out a bunch of fixes over time for all those users.
Every Windows machine but 1 in my house is >5 years old. The 1 that is newer was just built this year to replace a machine with an >11 year old motherboard (CPU/RAM had been upgraded since). It does help that I went 100% SSD and touch (for laptops) when Windows 8 came out.
I don't think there will ever be another OS that has the same level of backwards compatibility that Windows does. It is just too hard. Support longer than iOS on an ecosystem more diverse than Android. Windows users expect it though.