Is Windows 10 too popular for its own sake?

Like every version of Windows in the modern era, Windows 10 also follows a 10-year support lifecycle. This means that most Windows 10 editions – Home, Pro, Pro Workstation, Enterprise and Education – will reach their support end date on October 14, 2025. (For more information on how that date is calculated, see “When Will Microsoft Discontinue Support for Your Version of Windows or Office?”)

So, what will happen when that day comes? Nothing. In truth, nothing happens on that date. PCs running Windows 10 will continue to work as they always have, and they will continue to do so indefinitely. However, beyond that date, those PCs will no longer receive security updates. Any security flaws found after that day will remain intact, leaving those PCs more vulnerable to online attacks.

Too: Is Microsoft Blocking Windows 11 Updates for Unsupported Hardware?

There is at least one exception to this cutoff date, which applies to PCs running Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Servicing edition. In total, Microsoft has released four of these versions. Support for the 2015 Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) ends on October 14, 2025, along with the previously described versions. Support for the 2016 LTSB release ends a year later, on October 13, 2026. In early 2019, the name was changed to Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). For Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019, the deadline is January 9, 2029. Confusingly, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 only has a five-year support lifecycle, meaning it ends support on January 12, 2027.

If someone tells you they know the answer, maybe stop listening to them?

Microsoft can probably make a solid estimate based on its own telemetry, but the rest of us are forced to guess based on fragmented third-party metrics.

Too: How to record screen in Windows 10 or Windows 11

One of the sources I’ve relied on over the years is the United States government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which has a well-organized repository of information about traffic on official websites run by agencies such as the Postal Service, the National Weather Service, and the National Weather Service. IRS, and NASA.

When I visited dApps last week, I had no trouble downloading the last 90 days of data, which summarizes more than 1.6 billion visits to those websites by people using Windows-based PCs from around the world Was. Here’s what the data told me:

That’s the real question, isn’t it?

The PC market is finally starting to slow down after two pandemic-induced years of immense growth, but it’s likely that more than 200 million new Windows PCs will be sold each year in the near future. The most optimistic scenario is that every one of those new PCs replaces a Windows 10 device that is later phased out, replaced by another 100 million or so of Chromebooks, iPads and Macs, maybe even some older PCs. be simply put out to pasture and not replaced. Of course, as consumers decide to use their phone or tablet instead.

Too: Best Computers: Laptops, Macs, PCs and Others Compared

This best-case scenario still forces hundreds of millions of people to run Windows 10 as the end-of-support date approaches in October 2025. Who owns those PCs?

• Which can’t be upgraded. Some people have older hardware that doesn’t meet the minimum hardware compatibility standards for Windows 11. Basically, this means any PC that was designed in 2018 or earlier. Note that this category includes many budget PCs that used older designs and unsupported CPUs but were sold as new in 2019 and 2020.

• Corporate PCs that standardize on Windows 10. A non-trivial number of enterprise IT managers have completed their Windows 10 migration over the past year or two and probably aren’t eager to do it again.

• Windows 10 diehard. From my time spent reading the support forums, I know that there is a sizeable population of longtime Windows users who are unhappy with the changes in Windows 11. Some of them will upgrade reluctantly, but others will not.

Certainly a possibility, and has precedent in the experience of Windows XP, which ended support in April 2014, more than 12 years after it was first released. Windows XP users also received emergency security updates long after that official expiration date, to patch the WannaCry vulnerability in 2017 and a similar flaw in 2019.

Similarly, Windows 7 holdouts got the option to pay for extended security updates for a full three years after the official end of support in January 2020.

Of course, in both of those cases, customers running a soon-to-be-obsolete Windows version had the option of upgrading to a newer version. In fact, this is the recommendation from Microsoft Official product end of support page,

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Once a product reaches end of support, or service is discontinued, there will be no new security updates, non-security updates, or assisted support. Customers are encouraged to migrate to the latest version of the product or service.

However, for Windows 10, that option may not be available. Devices that do not meet the hardware compatibility requirements will not have a Microsoft-supported migration path to the new version. As I pointed out last time I looked at this issue, owners of those fully functional PCs, some only five or six years old, will instead have the following options:

• Install a non-Microsoft operating system. Perhaps 2026 will be the year desktop Linux finally takes hold, although it is unlikely. ChromeOS Flex could be another option, but it has its own options hardware compatibility requirements Which probably makes it unsuitable for older hardware.

• Ignore Microsoft’s warnings and upgrade to Windows 11 anyway. There are options for installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware, but they require a fair amount of technical experience. People who are stuck with old PCs because they haven’t been able to afford a new PC probably don’t have those special skills. And I doubt many businesses would be willing to risk the support issues that come with that approach.

• Keep running Windows 10 and hope for the best. History suggests that this is the most likely option.

Microsoft and its OEM partners would prefer that owners of those devices toss them in a landfill and buy a new PC running Windows 11. But my experience with PC owners, especially older ones with fixed incomes, is that they will use those devices until they stop working. Those PCs will be sitting quietly thanks to cyberattacks like WannaCry, which was brutally effective against large populations of Windows 7 PCs that were still in use three years after its support ended.

Too: Windows 10 users from Microsoft: No more feature updates for you

That incident was a PR nightmare for Microsoft, and its recurrence would be even more devastating to the company’s reputation. That’s why I suspect Microsoft will extend support for Windows 10 for at least a year or two, especially for enterprise customers.

Given the fundamental similarities between Windows 10 and Windows 11, it probably won’t be much of a technical burden, and the cost of doing nothing is simply too high.