Is Windows 10 going away? Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com
you all keep asking about Windows 10.
Windows 10 is very popular, don't get me wrong.
It's currently the most popular operating system.
And as always happens, it had a lot
of issues, a lot of resistance when it was released.
But now it's become firmly entrenched and is a very popular version of Windows.
Of course, Windows 11 is also here,
and that has a lot of people concerned, is Windows 10 going away?
Well, the answer is, yes it is, and no, it's not.
It really depends on what you mean by going away.
There are some pros and cons
to the various scenarios, but I want to walk through exactly
what's going to happen with Windows 10 over the course of the next few years.
First of all, yes,
Windows 10 is going away in the sense that formal end of support for Windows 10
has been announced as October the 14th of 2025.
As I record this, that's a little over two and a half years from now.
What that means is at that time,
there will be no further updates to the operating system.
None.
No bug fixes, no security fixes, no nothing.
Between now and then, of course, it will continue to be updated.
And in fact, if I understand the cadence
properly, there will be a release, we'll call it 23H2 in the second half of 2023.
That will be a major release.
They went to an annual cycle.
And that will be the last major release, a major update to Windows 10.
After that, it's bug fixes and security
fixes only until October the 14th, 2025, at which point they're done.
At that point, it'll no longer be updated.
Now, in a sense, it's already started to go away.
I say that because it's becoming
increasingly more difficult to even find Windows 10.
If you want to say purchase a copy of it.
If you get a new machine,
the chances are Windows 11 will be what you get, not Windows 10.
So it's safe to assume that that's only
going to get worse, that it's going to get more and more difficult to find Windows 10
at all as Windows 11 continues to gain market share and of course,
gain pressure from Microsoft for you all to update and do whatever.
On the other hand, no, Windows 10 is not going away
in this sense that on October the 14th, 2025, nothing will happen.
Your Windows 10 machine,
if it's still running Windows 10 at that point, will continue to run Windows 10.
Nothing will break. Nothing will stop.
It'll just keep running.
Your machine that's running Windows 10 will work just fine.
It'll stop getting updates for Windows.
Some of your other applications,
and interestingly enough, a few Windows components like
the Windows security software or of course, all Microsoft
software like Microsoft Office, they'll probably keep getting updates as well.
It's simply that you'll stop getting updates and that's it for Windows itself.
But your machine will keep running
and probably keep running for a very long time.
One of the things that's interesting about this scenario is that it's not new.
We've been here before.
There are people who are still
running Windows 7, or Windows Vista, or Windows XP for that matter.
Those have ended, the support for those
has ended years ago, multiple years ago. And yet, they're working fine.
They're using their machines just fine.
Yeah, they have to be a little extra careful because they're not getting
updates, especially the security updates that might be protecting them from
unpatched vulnerabilities in the operating system.
But there's never really been a big
apocalypse when any of those security dates have passed.
There's not been some unleashing of
exploits for those older versions of the operating system.
The fact is, as long as you continue to keep your head about you,
stay skeptical, stay safe, you can continue to use Windows 10,
or in fact, Windows 7, Windows XP for as long as makes sense for you.
There is another side to this coin, a third slide to this coin,
and that is that yes, pragmatically, Windows 10 is going away eventually.
I think Windows XP and Windows 7 folks are
already starting to experience some of this as well.
The pragmatic problem is that support for Windows 10
will eventually go away from the various software packages that you're using today.
Now, that may not matter to you.
You may not be using anything that really does have a Windows 10 specific
component and it may just keep working forever.
On the other hand,
you may run into software packages that say, You know what?
Windows 10 is too hard for us to continue
to support, so we're not going to support it after this date.
The good news here is that date is usually
years from the actual Microsoft end of support for Windows
10, but it's going to vary from application to application that you
use and care about. And when that happens, say you're using, I don't know,
some a word processor that at some point decides that it's going to stop
supporting Windows 10, all that really means is they too will
stop updating that software and you'll have to make a choice.
Do you continue to use that software without updates, like you've been using
Windows 10 without updates up to that point?
Do you find an alternative that continues
to be supported, or do you finally bite the bullet and upgrade to whatever the
current version of Windows happens to be at that time?
But the bottom line for that is
that that's actually much further off than Windows 10's own end of support date.
That is a per application.
And for many applications, honestly, it might never happen.
There are many, many, many applications
that are still running on Windows XP just fine.
Current versions are running on Windows XP just fine.
Over time, they will be fewer and fewer.
And that, ultimately, is what might end up pushing people off of Windows 10.
But like I said, that's years from now.
So I hope that helps put a little bit of
framework around what's happening to Windows 10.
Yes, it's going away in the sense that Microsoft is going to stop updating it.
No, it's not going to go away because you can keep using it as long as you want to.
Yes, it is going to go away because eventually the application
that you're using will probably stop supporting it as well.
For updates, for comments,
for links related to this topic and more, visit
Askleo.com/102209.
I'm Leo Notenboom and this is Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.