Windows 8 users have a little less than seven months to move to Windows 8.1 or be severed from Microsoft’s security update stream.

The 2012 operating system will be retired from support on Jan. 12, 2016. After that date — which is the month’s traditional patch-release day — users of Windows 8 will not see further security updates, including those for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11), the OS’s bundled browser.

To continue to receive security updates, Windows 8 users must upgrade to Windows 8.1, the free 2013 edition available from the Windows Store, Microsoft’s app market.

The January 2016 deadline has been in place since the debut of Windows 8.1 nearly two years ago, and was positioned as analogous to the 24-month grace period previously given to customers for migrating from a core OS to that operating system’s first “service pack.”

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