Microsoft extends free Windows 10 security updates into 2026

anecdotal evidence, but even my non-IT friends prefer to try out Linux than upgrade to w11. Meanwhile most corporate already swapped to w11.

53% is a huge failure on MS part, but that's what happens when you design OS to be a bad copy of your competition.

You might be seeing it in the same lens as macos for instance, but windows' model is fundamentaly different and that deadline is only for specific cases (that's why they can play the "sign up for backup and we'll expand your time" game)

For instance Enterprise LTSC version of Windows 10 is officially supported until 2031.

A ton of the devices inside these 53% have no need to move away from win 10 in any urgent way.

I'm still on a i7 4770k, waiting for non-bugged intel CPU's to launch, and upgrading to Win11 always fails

If your org has a fiscal year that begins in the middle of the calendar year (July 1), there might not have been the budget to do the upgrade until months away.

Compounded with general upgrade procrastination...

In order to make that claim you'd need to compare it with rates in past upgrade cycles to see if it's worse or better.

You don't purchase Microsoft points. You can purchase extra support with 1000 Microsoft points that you can easily get for free in like a week clicking on some links on Bing.

Missing vertical taskbar is probably the most egregious omission, but it's not so much they took it away as it is they created versions of a number of Windows Explorer components in a higher-level technology without implementing half the features and shipping it with 5x the number of bugs. I at least weekly (and often daily) run into issues with taskbar icons overlapping one another, menus not coming up when clicked, the tray icons breaking, etc.

Same story with navigating the file system--the new implementation has a multitude of issues, including getting into a state where clicks when selecting files only works below a certain invisible horizontal line in the window, windows not refreshing when files been added/removed, trying to rename a file you just copied being an exercise in frustration with the view refreshing and exiting the rename state 5 - 10 seconds after the copy... it's really frustrating software that's a full few tiers down from the quality standard set by Windows 10 and previous versions.

It's gotten slightly better since the initial Windows 11 release, but it still feels like pre-release quality software. I was hoping they'd get it up to release quality and add the important features back by the sunset of Windows 10, but it looks like Microsoft really doesn't care about the quality of the experience of using their UI.

If it was only the missing vertical taskbar as a design decision that would be one thing, but I think that's just the very obvious tip of an iceberg of lack of care, quality, resourcing, and skill. They don't add it back because they know in their current state they're not going to do it well, and the money's in dreaming up new ways to show pages of trash news stories. What if someone put the taskbar on the left side of the screen and they couldn't see the clickbait brainrot of widgets under it and Microsoft lost $.0003?

Not sure man, I just want a version of Microsoft Windows without all the telemetry and the ads and the aggressive control Microsoft has on the system via updates.

Time and again they keep changing the default browser, throwing ads into Start Menu, blocking specific applications (such as Chrome etc. Bad example because Chrome is an evil junkyard. Imagine them blocking Google Drive one day because they want you to use OneDrive).

In general WSL is great but the entire Windows system feels so outdated and full of duplicate layers thrown upon each other with modern UIs on top of old APIs with the old UIs not even deleted and taken care of.

The productivity and cleanliness of OS X keeps convincing me again and again to stick to the Macs as a platform - in my POV this is one of the few things Apple has gotten right (with Apple CPUs), after decades.

An OS with electron components is just absurd. They laid off all the competent employees who knew how to write c++.

I’m so glad you mentioned the vertical taskbars being taken away. There’s a feedback item on Microsoft’s forums that’s years old now and they still haven’t addressed it. It seems so weird that they took away this functionality that they’d had implemented for years, seemingly for no reason.

> I'm still a bit upset that they took away vertical taskbars from us

After getting a new W11 laptop at work and discovering the removal of vertical taskbars (ridiculous on 16:9 monitors), that particular loss is specifically what keeps me from "upgrading" from W10. Windows Updates warns me that "certain features aren't available on Windows 11" without specifying which ones; finding that sane placement of my taskbar is one of them means I'm plenty willing to pay $30 for another year of security updates to get to keep W10.

I've had nearly perfect success using the setup command line argument to install as "server". It says "Server" during the install but that's not what ends up being installed.

This has been patched out[0] of newer builds but a 24H2 install media will still work for an in-place upgrade.

[0] https://winaero.com/microsoft-has-patched-the-product-server...

Use rufus.ie to burn a USB that has the hardware restrictions removed. Works a treat IME.

Did you check your BIOS settings to see if you can turn on the TPM? Worked for me on several circa 2018 custom built machines. The builder, Puget Systems, shipped the machines with the TPM turned off. With the TPM turned on, Win 11 installed without undue drama.

Upgrading to Windows 11 is possible from an unsupported Windows 10 machine by adjusting a registry setting and downloading an ISO from Microsoft.

Don't fix what's not broken. Get a cheap Raspberry Pi and configure pihole to block ads/malware for their home network.

Install Win 11 anyway.

Bypass instructions are on YouTube, Reddit, Github, tech blogs, etc.

Windows 10 came out almost 10 years ago and they offered a free upgrade to Windows 11. I know people love to hate on Microsoft, but they’ve done better than most technology companies when it comes to security updates here. You’re lucky to get even half of that length of support from most Android devices for example.