As Microsoft will get able to sunset Windows 10, safety assist is scheduled to finish in October. You may get a one-year extended security update for $30. However if you wish to keep on with Home windows 10 for one more 12 months, you is perhaps higher off with Microsoft’s free option — you may simply want to make use of cloud backup and join it together with your OneDrive account.
The flexibility to get free updates on Home windows 10 is a fairly large deal as a result of it’s nonetheless probably the most broadly used Home windows OS, accounting for just over 53% of installs as of Could 2025. That leaves thousands and thousands of individuals with out safety assist in only a few months until they improve. So the cloud backup choice provides customers a method out with out costing them any cash.
The one potential concern is OneDrive. Anybody with a Microsoft account will get as much as 5GB of storage free of charge. Nevertheless, as The Verge points out, some backups could exceed this limitation, requiring customers to buy a month-to-month or yearly plan. At $2 per thirty days for 100GB of cloud storage, a 12 months of OneDrive nonetheless prices lower than the $30 for a 12 months of extra safety updates, however it could nonetheless trigger frustration amongst some clients.
Home windows 10 was launched a decade in the past, in July 2015.
Microsoft will likely be rolling out the ESU wizard in July 2025.
How one can get Home windows 10 safety updates free of charge
Per Microsoft’s blog post, there at the moment are three choices for individuals who wish to keep on Home windows 10 and nonetheless obtain safety updates:
You’ll be introduced with these choices beginning in July, which is when Microsoft plans to roll out the sign-up wizard for the Prolonged Safety Updates program. Signing up for this feature will assure updates till Oct. 13, 2026, though companies can have the choice to buy as much as three years of extra updates. So, this is not a long-term resolution, however moderately provides you extra time to improve to Home windows 11.
It has been an uphill battle for Microsoft, as individuals have been reluctant to improve their present {hardware}. There are myriad differences between the two working methods, however Microsoft’s string of unpopular decisions together with Windows 11 compatibility issues have stored the prior era OS round rather a lot longer than it usually could be.
