This just in…
Microsoft now says: “In the interest of maintaining your security while you upgrade to Windows 11, we will continue providing security updates for Microsoft 365 on Windows 10 for a total of three years after Windows 10 end of support, ending on October 10, 2028.”
Hard to believe they’ll really pull the plug on supporting around a third of all Windows installs too, it’s at least 500 million devices! Even if they don’t officially back-down they would surely have to push out security patches to everyone if a major flaw is found.
…if you extrapolate those numbers to the worldwide population of Windows PCs, you can see the problem. Over the past eight months, about 1.6% of Windows 10 PCs have been replaced by Windows 11 PCs each month. At that pace, about 35% of those 1.4 billion devices will still be running Windows 10 when October 2025 rolls around…
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-still-has-a-massive-windows-10-problem-and-theres-no-easy-way-out/
I guess it’s fair to say this is mainly aimed at big institutions, would you say?
In that, if as a consumer you can only get 1 year extended support of Win 10, then really that’s only 1 year of (secure) extended support of 365 too.
Does seem like the pushback might be getting to them though…
Yes - I think you’re right.
The oddness is that their offering to support an App on an unsupported OS - which seems like madness but…
I agree Lee - cannot see how that works. I would advise everyone to start looking at alternative - Windows 11 (buy new hardware - not very green of Microsoft) or Linux. My favourite right now is linux Mint and Zorin OS (this interface will appeal to mac and windows users)
New potentially free route to a year of updates
Good that more options are (slowly, slowly) becoming available. It might help some people keep going for longer, though only postpones the issue.
(And free as in money, not particularly free as in liberty… forcing sign up to Microsoft services is a bit rum).
Based on my previous post I’ve been accumulating Microsoft Reward points. There’s a few shortcuts to reaching the 1,000 points goal, mainly involving using Bing search for a few days - hardly a chore as Google isn’t exactly great these days:
= 1,100 points
Should keep my personal Windows 10 laptops going for another year. They’re nearing end of life, only see light use, have tired batteries, etc… It’s hard to justify spending time on changing their OS now.
Also worth considering the £68 billion that M$ is investing in AI data-centres in 2025, including some £2-3 billion in the UK. Is there not some irony in us “doing our bit” by saving our devices from landfill, hopefully saving emissions, while propping up a massive corporation that actively invests in ruining environments all over the world and inflicts spyware disguised as an operating system on us? May as well switch now rather than later. At least try it.
Preview of Extended Security Update options that will be presented to users soon.
Demonstrates new option of allowing settings back-up using a Microsoft account to enrol - which you can then turn off and return to a local account if required
