Microsoft officially decapitates Windows 10, abandoning hundreds of millions of users

Microsoft officially severs support from Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, marking the End-of-Life phase for the popular operating system, as it will no longer receive security updates, new features, bug fixes, or necessary patches.

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While Windows 10 is more than a decade old, the operating system still has a substantial user base of hundreds of millions of people, who are now faced with the decision of upgrading the machine they currently have with the necessary hardware to run Windows 11, buy a completely new Windows 11 capable PC, abandon Windows altogether for competing operating systems such as MacOS, or simply run the risk of their current machine exponentially being prone to security breaches since Microsoft is no longer providing vital security updates to malware hunting software.

There is another option, albeit it is a band-aid fix for the situation, as Microsoft offers one-year extended security updates for Windows 10 users, but that will require a payment of $30 per system, or logging into Windows 10 with a Microsoft account to sync your settings. It should be noted that Microsoft is officially ending support for all versions of Windows 10, which means Home, Pro, and Enterprise.

According to Statcounter, which provides data between September 2024 and September 2025, 40% of Windows users are still on Windows 10.