Windows 7 is not secure if it is connected to a network because it no longer gets security patches. Anyone running Windows 7 on a network connected computer does not care about security and will get hacked.
> Anyone running Windows 7 on a network connected computer does not care about security and will get hacked.
It's not so simple. If the Windows 7 computer is on a physical network with only trusted devices, and behind a firewall, and only running trusted programs, in most cases the only exposed attack surface is going to be the browser.
Age is irrelevant. Market share is. The first search result [1] places Windows 7 at 3.34% of Windows marketshare currently, which is significant, IMHO, but your market may vary from whatever this statistic tracks. 8.1 at 1.66% and XP at 0.64% could be significant, too, depending on your market. If you're going to support 7, you may as well support 8 and 8.1 too because it may not be any more work.
Can you yet get a laptop that fits XP all in cache?
Edit: It looks like you could probably pull it off with some trimming and a sufficiently expensive Epyc, but I think you'll have to wait a few years for laptops to manage. Hopefully by then you can take XP out back and but it once and for all.
so maybe millions of vulnerable installs out there
there are 3rd party patches to install 120 on w7 but who would trust them?