Microsoft
For most individuals, Home windows 10 will cease receiving important safety updates on October 14, 2025, roughly a decade after its preliminary launch. For folks utilizing computer systems that may’t improve to Home windows 11 or organizations with dozens or a whole bunch of PCs to handle, Microsoft is making one other three years of Prolonged Safety Updates (ESUs) obtainable, however provided that you possibly can pay for them. And the corporate is able to begin speaking about pricing.
In a weblog submit printed earlier this week, Microsoft’s Jason Leznek writes that the primary yr of ESUs will price $61 per PC for companies that wish to preserve their programs up to date.
And as with the Home windows 7 ESUs a number of years in the past, Microsoft says that the value will double annually—so the second yr of ESUs will price $122 per PC, and the third yr will price a whopping $244 per system. And Microsoft says this pricing is cumulative; if you happen to determined to purchase ESUs for yr three after skipping the primary two years, you’d additionally must pay for the primary two years retroactively. These gradual worth hikes appear meant to drive companies emigrate to Home windows 11 as shortly as they’ll whereas nonetheless giving them a strategy to preserve utilizing Home windows 10 when completely mandatory.
Per standard, the massive variety of totally different Home windows licenses and companies that Microsoft gives makes the pricing scheme extra sophisticated. The quantity you will pay varies based mostly on the sort of group and the way you are utilizing Home windows. A separate weblog submit for academic establishments says that faculties will solely pay $1 per Home windows license for the primary yr of ESUs, $2 for the second yr, and $4 for the third yr, comparatively small charges that acknowledge that some faculties have restricted budgets and older fleets that may’t formally run Home windows 11.
Companies that use Microsoft Intune, Home windows Autopatch, or another “Microsoft cloud-based replace administration answer” can get the primary yr of ESUs for simply $45 per consumer, supporting as much as 5 PCs per consumer. Home windows 10 PCs that use Home windows 11 Cloud PCs by the Home windows 365 service will get Home windows 10 ESUs totally free with their subscription. Microsoft additionally says it would set up “particular pricing for nonprofits,” although it did not speak about specifics.
Microsoft remains to be planning to supply these ESUs to shoppers for the primary time—the Home windows 7 ESU program was strictly for organizations, although some customers who wished to stay with Home windows 7 did discover workarounds. Microsoft nonetheless hasn’t introduced shopper pricing, although if I needed to guess, I’d count on it to fall someplace between the usual enterprise pricing and the token schooling pricing.
Although Home windows 11 launched in October of 2021, its adoption has principally stalled out this yr, and Home windows 10 stays essentially the most extensively used model of Home windows by a considerable margin. Statcounter information says that Home windows 10 runs on 69 p.c of all Home windows PCs worldwide and 67 p.c of PCs within the US, in comparison with about 27 and 29 p.c for Home windows 11 (respectively). The most recent Steam {Hardware} Survey reveals Home windows 10 operating on 54 p.c of surveyed gaming PCs, in comparison with about 42 p.c for Home windows 11.
Knowledge from each of those sources must be taken with a grain of salt (Statcounter says that utilization of Home windows 8.1 rose from 1 p.c to six p.c between October 2023 and January 2024 earlier than all of a sudden falling again to 1 p.c in February of 2024, which appears… unlikely). However Home windows 11’s system necessities will preserve it from operating on a considerable variety of energetic PCs, limiting its potential for development.