Windows 10 Support To End
Microsoft has announced that support for Windows 10 will end on 14th October 2025. Microsoft want their users to move to their latest Operating System, Windows 11. It enables them to concentrate on keeping core products secure and to introduce new features that should benefit its users. This also cuts Microsoft’s workload in updating a host of ageing products. As time moves on it will be increasingly difficult to create solutions that will work with the limited capabilities of the software that older Operating Systems will are able to run on. Microsoft will still be offering their additional Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for Windows 10. This update plan is only expected to run until 2028 with increasing costs for each year the service is required. Eventually the user will face their update problem again.
Some users will not have the option to upgrade because their hardware does not have the minimum specifications to run Windows 11. The core stopping point is the age of the CPU required by Windows 11. For Intel CPUs this ends with 8th Gen chips (Coffee Lake), which first came out in 2017, and for AMD CPU the list only goes back to the Ryzen 2000 series (from 2018). The technology analyst Canalys has estimated that as many as 240 million PCs could fall into this category.
The only alternatives would be to continue with older versions of Windows and accept a reduction in security and system services. Another approach is to switch to another Operating System such as Linux. Linux desktops have a very similar look and feel to Windows but will not run many popular Microsoft products, including the Office suite. It should also be noted that the more popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu have similar features and hardware requirements to Windows. So an older machine that cannot run Windows 11 will probably not be able to cope with a recent Linux distribution.
One group of users that will be affected as those using or supplying older machines. These may originally have been donated without cost and are subsequently wiped and repurposed with new Operating Systems. These machines must continue to run with outdated software or will be stripped as a possible source of parts or (considering the age of such parts) will simply end up as e-waste.
Obsolete hardware is a continuing problem for computer systems. Google recently had an issue with their 2nd-gen Chromecast devices as their secure connection to Google services relied on a hard coded certificate. Fortunately this has now been fixed. Devices such as mobile phones are often impossible to upgrade but soon become redundant. At least their small size and the inherent value of their component elements makes their e-waste burden relatively low. On the other hand many PC components end up (legally or otherwise) as bulky landfill.
