Lots of PCs are poised to fall off the Windows 10 update cliff one year from today
One year from today, on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop releasing security updates for PCs that are still running Windows 10.
Organizations and individuals will still be able to pay for three more years of updates, with prices that go up steadily each year (Microsoft still hasn't provided pricing for end users, only saying that it will release pricing info "closer to the October 2025 date.") But for most PCs running Windows 10, the end of the line is in sight.
Normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal; the last dregs of support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 dried up in January 2023, and the world didn't end even though some PCs continue to run those OS versions. But there are three things about the end of Windows 10 support that are slightly different from other recent end-of-life dates:
All of these factors taken together are setting us up for something we haven't really seen in the Windows ecosystem before: a majority or a large minority of active Internet-connected PCs that will suddenly stop getting security updates, leaving either paid support, a new PC, or a switch to an entirely different operating system as the easiest paths forward.
