Should Windows 7 users upgrade to Window 8.1 or Linux Mint

Well, according to the article it's because Windows 7 has reached "end of life support." That doesn't really mean much to most people. Microsoft's "end of life" support still supplies security updates and bug fixes for all the while it is in effect, which will be another five years. In fact, Microsoft still sells Windows 7, and will continue to do so until business users approve of a replacement (they will extend its life if necessary). At this point, it seems probable that the release of Windows 10 will allow Microsoft to stop selling Windows 7, but if business users do not approve, that could still change.

One thing about the article that doesn't seem to be the case in my experience is that it claims that Windows Vista hardware will probably not be powerful enough to run Windows 8.1. As far as I have seen the only resource that Windows 8.1 seems tougher on than Windows Vista is hard drive space. Windows 8.1 seems to need plenty of that. Of course, this is nothing new. Windows has generally needed plenty of hard drive space for the time it was released compared to other systems. The amount that Windows XP needed to begin with seems fairly modest by today's standards, but if you run all the updates now available for XP, it quickly becomes quite a bit, considering the age of the system (updates will choke a 10GB drive even without installing any software; a 13GB drive seemed to have no problem the last time I checked; if you erase update backups you can manage to jam it into 10GB, or even 8GB, though that is harder).