Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10 Microsoft has updated its product lifecycle documentation to state that Windows 10 Home and Pro will be retired on 14 October 2025. The statement is likely linked to the forthcoming event on 24 June where Microsoft promises to unveil what's next for Windows. Note that it is the future of Windows, not of Windows 10, that is the …
"But is your UEFI box *capable* of Secure Boot?"
Yes. It is a 4th gen i7 laptop, but due to alternate booting I've disabled Secure Boot for easier living.
"Legacy machines that don't even have a Secure Boot option might be what will eventually be no longer supported."
Oh, I'm sure that will happen one day. Or at least requiring UEFI boot.
Win8 already required certain processors instructions/features, and practically everything pre-AMD64 / Intel Core i series was not working. Those same CPU requirements stand today with Win10. Likely some CPU feature will be a requirement in the future, thus cutting out more hardware.
...Or requiring more RAM than older systems can be fitted with. Or removing legacy BIOS boot. Or dropping 32-bit support for those few % still using it.
...that they'll stop this nonsense and go back to the previous model where you actually had half a chance of knowing which version of Windows the confused and angry person on the other end of the support call was using? Or that their version might bear some relation to the one you had because they hadn't mysteriously moved half the options and settings around between the Q1 and Q3 releases this year without telling anyone?
IMHO the current model is signficantly better for developers and support. The updates are smaller, less invasive and while things still go wrong, you rarely need to completely reinstall the entire OS from scratch. Its one of the few things MS have learned from the opensource / Linux world where the same strategy has been used for years. I almost never need to know what kernel or even version of Raspian or Ubuntu or Redhat I'm on.
signficantly better for developers
I think it depends very much on who you're developing for. If it's for a general desktop audience, you've still pretty much got to target Windows 7 for the legacy minority. If not, it's likely to be web-based. There will be cases for Windows 10-specific applications, but, beyond games, I'm struggling to think of many.
I agree.
I'm out in the sticks, on a 2Mbps ADSL connection. A windows update for the two Win machines in the house can kill the connection for days, if we're unlucky.
I always know when a windows update (or Adobe, their updater is worse) is coming. I have trouble loading a standard web page.
less invasive?
Not sure how much more invasive you could get, with forced updates, that may or may not crash your machine?!
Erm, it isn't developers and support that matter though, it's the end user that counts, isn't it?
Unless we don't give a sh1t about end users anymore, and just dump whatever sh1t we like on them?
And then reboot their machines at whim (our whim, not theirs) when we're done dumping shit on them.
By all means, download updates and tell me they're available, but DO NOT reboot my machine without my explicit consent. Drives me nuts when I wander back to my machine to find all the stuff I left there yesterday gone.
I find your ideas intriguing (and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, etc etc.)
Software versioning should be much more poetic, à la Chinese imperial court. Who here would not want to be able to say, "I am running Firefox The-Delicate-Scent-of-Hibiscus-Blossoms-After-Spring-Rain"? (Such a person would be out of date by the end of the sentence, of course, Firefox's release cadence being what it is, but that's a whole 'nother gripe.)
I seem to remember that someone decided, after running the numbers, it seems that Microsoft makes a loss from Windows over time. But it's considered to be a useful loss leader for that MS Office which is very profitable. The move to the subscription model, makes this somewhat moot. It was Office 365, now its Microsoft 365, and you will have Teams forcibly installed and you will use it!
Hence, I think the real reason for the change will be to limit any liability claims for holdouts when Microsoft stop providing updates to all users.
"they will be charging for the next version...."
One fees or monthly/annual subscription? My bet is on the latter.
And not forgetting they have form for pushing updates that nag you about not upgrading from previous versions. Buy a new version/subscribe to the new service or see a black desktop with a dire warning message about no future updates and the massive security risk you now at.
Satya Nadella made a very revealing slip, accidental or otherwise, the other day - one which neither this article nor any of these comments seem to have picked up on.
Describing his own experience of the new Windows version, he said something along the lines of "I have been self-hosting it for a while...". What an odd turn of phrase. "I have been using it", "I've had it running on my systems", sure. But "self-hosting"? Makes me fear that this new version will be much more SaaS-y than even Windows 10. Maybe a small stub installed on the PC, and everything else loaded in from The All-Mighty-Cloud as and when you^H^H^HMicrosoft decide it's needed? I fear it's going to make Adobe's rent-as-you-go model look like a paragon of old-fashioned perpetual licence virtue.
Time to be afraid?
My interpretation is as follows:-
The Operating System *is* Edge.
To use your pc Edge loads up your Win365 page, which is your Desktop.
Find the Explorer icon (they've moved it again...). Click on it and it shows all your files in a library called OneDrive (if you're lucky there might be a library called MyPC, but don't count on it). Hosted versions of Word and Excel are summoned using icons on your desktop (embedded in your personalised Edge session).
They are not on your pc though. Everything is done in Azure, on MS Servers.
Nothing is on your pc, which is effectively a dumb terminal.
Scared? Frightened?
VMS was a more advanced OS than Unix, having been started in 1977 with fairly large machines in mind, while Unix began in 1969 with fairly small machines in mind. Of course any old low-end PC today has many times the CPU power, storage, and memory of a 1978-era VAX-11/780. But VMS was a fine OS! Don't knock it unless you've lived with it. Linux is usable, especially for servers, but still displays hack upon hack.
changing over to the Linux kernel
as cool as that would be, particularly for kernel drivers (assuming they don't taint the kernel nor require signing certificates), our hopes were dashed LAST time when we all probably believed that Windows 10 would be a revert back to 7's UI...
(and a big big frowny face for that)
The system I'm using to write this is set up for dual boot -- Windows 10 and Linux Mint. I put Linux on it because I was having issues with USB drivers for a JTAG debugger (I could run Linux as WSL or in a virtual environment I'll still have the driver problems). So I now have the choice of booting up either system and running Firefox and Thunderbird, essentially the same applications on the same hardware but with a different OS. Its night and day. Linux boots up a lot faster, its applications are mudh more responsive, installing drivers and even a network printer is a no brainer, its got so that I only boot up Windows occasionally because if I don't the update-du-jour cycle will mean it will take ages to start and I do need to use it.
There is something very, very, wrong with the Windows ecosystem. You can tell there's an issue just by listening to the system -- if I leave Linux idling with just something like Firefox open then it will rapidly shut down and go quiet. Windows has the processor fan blasting away regardless of the nominal load on the processor. I haven't a clue what its doing, the Task Manger isn't very helpful, but I suspect that constant AV scans, file indexing and the endless quest for analytics just keeps the system on the boil.
This isn't the first time I've noticed this. I've been running dual boot systems for decades and always its the same issue -- Windows is constantly 'busy'. The only version that I've ever enjoyed using is Windows 2000, it seemed to be hosted on a proper OS, it was not only quite responsive but really easy to write 'the kind of software I write' on (Posix compliant, if I recall correctly).
Upvote for the Windows 2000 reference. It was a great, no nonsense OS. Reliable and fast.
Would also up vote you again if I could for the Linux Mint reference (beer instead -->) - I too run Mint - however, I don't dual boot. It's just Mint. I have Win 10 in Virtual Box VM if I need it, but I haven't ran it for months! The only thing I need Windows for is Siemens PLC programming software on the rare occasions when I need it.
Call me a luddite, but I agree, I used Windows 2000 Advanced Server as my daily PC for many years. Only when the motherboard died did I forcibly migrate to Vista for driver compatibility.. Win 7 is still where it's at if you want to know what the PC is actually up to and for the broadest driver support.
Just run Procmon and see all the mischief Win10 does, endless churning of registry entries.
Also they don't even trust their own code or delivery system. After every update, windows anti-virus scans all the new files from the update, the logs for the update, and all the related temporary files, bricking your system until it finishes.
So, whatever comes next, it will not be called Windows?
Perhaps the replacement will be called Doors or Drawers or maybe Ventanas (Spanish word for windows) to go with Cortanas ( Almost Spanish for curtains: cortinas).
What I suspect is, it will be even more AAS with a confusing plethora of packages to pay for and daily AI auditing in order to squeeze every last penny out of you.
So, whatever comes next, it will not be called Windows
On the contrary, I expect it will be called just "Windows" as the "10" version is now irrelevant what with it being delivered as a constantly evolving service. Folding both "Windows 10 Home" and "Windows 10 Pro" into "Windows" makes sense as there is no point in maintaining them as two different flavors.
Oh well... we can but hope that MS decides to make the death of 'the last version of windows' something to celebrate.
Sadly, I think it will herald the start of an era of subscriptions for all that may well start an exodus from the windows platform.
In the meantime, I'll continue to reject all calls for help with a W10 system that no longer works the way it did before the last update.
It is always hard to predict what happens. If google starts requiring that every handset should be suitable for a standard dock so it can be used as desktop, or manages to get an edge with chrome, any predatory behave of MS in regard to their desktop OS might backfire.
The world is changing fast, millenials raised by their smart phone, might have different ideas about the average office desktop they want to use.
Smartphones - or at least a mobile - now seem to be expected by my UK high street bank. They blocked my account over a "suspected fraud" because I made a large-ish transaction - and didn't contact me.
I finally chased them and asked why they hadn't notified me by phone or email. They said the official file explanation was that my "phone number wasn't valid" - even though they acknowledged their CLI was showing me calling from that registered landline number.
They decided the problem was that I had never given them a mobile number to which they could text.
It has crept upon us; Smartphones appear to be expected by all large organisations from Banks, Insurance to NHS to Other Gov Services, Amazon etc etc and if you don't have one (can you afford the subscription) it can be difficult. Many don't even accept emails (for various reasons) and some don't recognise landlines (why?). It is getting so that you will be a pariah excluded from society in general if you don't use a smartphone.
Smartphones appear to be expected by all large organisations from Banks, Insurance to NHS to Other Gov Services, Amazon etc
I can't think of a single organization I deal with which requires a smartphone. There are a few who ask for phone numbers and claim they'll send SMS messages, but a feature phone would work fine for that. (That's true of my mobile-service provider too.) And I imagine I could get by even without SMS if I wanted to.
I installed a banking app on my phone once. I never used it. I couldn't find any reason to do so.
I have no idea why you need a smartphone to deal with Amazon. When I have the misfortune to do so, I do it from my laptop.
Of course this may differ where you are and with whom you deal, but it's certainly not true for me.
"[...] and claim they'll send SMS messages, but a feature phone would work fine for that.
My BT landline number happily accepts SMS messages. BT transcribe the text into an acceptable voice message. On that basis there is no reason for organisations to refuse to send text messages if you don't have a mobile.
I don't place orders with companies who insist on only a mobile number for any possible last-minute delivery messages. Any such messages are usually voice ones anyway to say they are arriving soon.
"I have no idea why you need a smartphone to deal with Amazon."
IIRC the new concept of Amazon self-serve grocery stores requires you to have a smartphone.
When I ring any of my banking suppliers I have to endure a long message while they tell me I should be using their smartphone app. During the obstacle course of key-press options they repeat that message at every level. It doesn't help that their non-app online banking doesn't always provide the necessary contact options.
> or manages to get an edge with chrome, any predatory behave of MS in regard to their desktop OS might backfire.
Google itself is already predatory enough, which allows some leeway. At best there would be a gradual increase where alternately each of them tightens the screw a little more, so to stay not too far from what the competition does, but still make a little more profit.
BTW I rather think it will be a cloudy version of Windows: Everything will be on some distant server, so on top of the OS/programs' subscription you'll have to pay for the space used lest your instance is deleted and you lose everything, your paid programs and your own data. It's the ideal solution because it removes all possibility of initiative from the user and allows them to monetize absolutely every aspect of his computer use. It will be slow, clumsy, limited and often unavailable, but that's nothing a couple lines in the T&C can't fix...
Most consumers never directly paid for Bloatware-as-a-Disservice/Disgrace. It was part of the box they paid for once. The proposed subscription model might cause an exodus. The other events would push some away for BaaD over time, those who are more tech savvy or willing to put up with a Fruity solution.
Yes, any exodus, small or large, for home users, I suspect would be to either Apple or Chromebooks because they heard of that. Most have not heard of Linux at all, maybe some of the bigger "brands" with "funny sound names" like Ubuntu. Businesses will simply stump up in most cases because they short term investment in switching will be too great for them. A long term slow bleed seems more affordable than a sudden haemorrhage.
The rules are:
* The year must be evenly divisible by 4;
* If the year can also be evenly divided by 100, it is not a leap year; unless...
* The year is also evenly divisible by 400. Then it is a leap year.
So 2000 was a leap year, but 3000 will not be a leap year.
How quickly they forget ;-)
What do they mean "no cost?" There's always a cost to everything, it's a basic law of the universe. Even FOSS comes with a cost in terms of incompatiilities, lack of features, need for some degree of technical knowledge &c.
The "cost" of Windows might not be in dollars/pounds/euros/yen/yuan/whatever but there is a *very* high cost in terms of data slurping, constant bug squashing, lack of meaningful competition, ecosystem lock-in....
Even FOSS comes with a cost in terms of incompatiilities, lack of features, need for some degree of technical knowledge
Aside from sticking in a USB, rebooting, and accepting the defaults it's currently incredibly easy to unstall something like Mint, plus 99% of hardware will autoconfigure itself - especially the six or seven year old items that Windows rejects.
And you avoid the hour long update and reboot nonsense, and the UI stays the same, year in, year out..
Plus Linux sytems make PDF creation dead simple without forcing you into Adobe hell.
Sure, if you need some specific apps you need Windows, but the majority of people can live happily with Linux and LibreOffice m
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5 years of support is for those who held out until the very last minute before upgrading from 7, as if you upgraded to Window 10 when it was first released in 2015 you would have had 10 years of support by the time 2025 comes around. And going off previous Windows versions such as XP, Vista and 7 all became EOL after around 10 years so that amount of time seems pretty standard for MS to end support of their OS.
Who knows whether Windows 11 or 365 or whatever the marketing dept decide to call it won't just really be Windows 10 under the hood with another name and whatever shiny shiny interface they try an tac onto it to make it seem new.
That won't work because people are not used to paying a monthly fee to use a device. You don't pay a monthly fee to Apple to get updates for iOS or OSX. Neither do you pay a monthly fee to Google to get updates for Android. The backlash against a subscription Windows will be too much.
I, for one, will not pay for updates out of principle. I would, however, pay handsomely if Microsoft re-introduced Windows 7.
Most people seem to have a monthly contract for their mobiles and/or their music/video/TV streaming services. Landlines and ISPs have also been effectively subscription services for many years.
It's getting to the point where you need a smartphone just to access some things - and not just in Amazon cashless grocery stores.
> That won't work because people are not used to paying a monthly fee to use a device
Older people. Younger people are very comfortable with the subscription/streaming model where you only have things as long as you keep paying for them. They call it "freedom" (the definition of "freedom" is clearly very elastic).
Besides, home users aren't the real target, the real money is in enterprises and enterprises are used to that model, bean counters even prefer it. For them it spells "freedom" (well...).
(Upvote for the Win7 suggestion, even it's pure utopia...)
Just makes things easier if EVERYTHING IS TEAMS!
No need for any other names.
I bet their team discussed this at length with team Teams meetings, cross-team Teams chat with other teams on Teams and Teams posts on their team's Teams teams teams Teams TEAMS TEAMS TEAMS TEAMS!
I moved recently from an environment that primarily used Teams for VC to one that uses Google Meets. I’m not sure why, but same laptop, wifi, DSL - Teams video was much better. The google one is slow, laggy, freezes randomly for 25-30 seconds. I never though I’d miss Teams…
What's confusing is that the older Sharepoint docs seemed to have the concept of "teams" as part of how things worked in Sharepoint land, long before MS Teams became a thing. So it can be confusing at times to know whether a googled Sharepoint doc is talking about little-t "teams", or the Teams software, or teams in Teams.
Nobody needs any more than XP and Office 2003
Upgrades serve nobody's purpose. How many services/project have had to do unnecessary re-work just because their Windows flavour changed ? And at vast cost!
I get the occasional call from "Microsoft Support".
I love telling them I'm on Windows 95 ;-)
A mate of mine used to delight in saying : if you're prepared to have something three years old, you can have the very best there is at a much reduced cost!
> if you're prepared to have something three years old, you can have the very best there is at a much reduced cost!
Yes, it's true children get more cost-intensive as they grow older. Age 3 is a good compromise since it's past the sleepless nights, but before the point they acquire enough mobility to cause concern...
given the history MS has with x86 builds of Win10 installation media, my guess of a major feature of the new OS that is coming is that it will be exclusive for 64-bit code and will drop all support for even running x86 binaries, not even x86 .Net Framework stuffs...
(but hopefully it will allow it in a Hyper-V virtual machine...)
I think you are massively underestimating how much 32-bit code there is. It took them about 10-15 years to kill Win16 and it had significant functional limitations compared to Win32. Win32 code has no such limits compared to Win64, unless your problem has datasets bigger than 2GB. Unsurprisingly then, there are still plenty of expensive speciality apps that are sold as 32-bit software. It ain't broke, so why fix it?
"It ain't broke, so why fix it?"
I don't think that's the MS motto. More like, "Maybe we broke it, but no problem, the users will let us know (shrug)."
Anyway, all the speculation here is way off the mark. The only reason MS is doing away with 10 is because it doesn't support their soon-to-be unveiled Lava UI. It shimmers! And every time you click on something you get iridescent colors streaming from the cursor, like those early (non-touch) color laptop monitors when you touched them.
Microsoft have previous form.
16-bit apps ended up being supported in their own sandbox on 32-bit windows.
The word I heard is that the next Windows will have 32-bit apps running in a sandbox, maybe 64-bit Windows apps in another, Linux in another and the overall Windows management OS will simply become a hypervisor. It may even be Linux based.
If it wasn't for the fact that Apple would throw *all* their toys out of the pram, various flavours of Apple would be capable of running in sandboxes, as they do currently in a VM on Windows.
I'm more interested in whether Android apps would be supported. It would certainly be possible for Xbox to merge into this scenario.
I got a free upgrade to W10 from retail W7 but every time I change any major hardware on my computer getting it recognise the hardware change and see my Windows copy as legitimate has been in vane. Only got it to work once, after that I have just embraced the watermark in the bottom right when I am playing any games.
Don't know how true it is, but one tip I heard was to log into the PC using an MS account (hotmail/outlook.com etc) once your system was up and running (i.e. no watermark), and basically let it phone home. Doesn't need to be the primary account, so could be added afterwards. i.e. Use a local account normally, then login with the MS account, leave it logged in for a while with an Internet connection, then back to your regular account.
Then after a hardware change, log back in with the MS account for a short while.
I did this on an old system (i7 3770k, so what 9 years old now?), where I always used a local account, I then set up a secondary MS account.
A few years ago, I stripped the PC for parts, replaced by a new Ryzen system.
I eventually decided to re-use the motherboard (plus RAM and CPU that were still on the board), but everything else was new, SSD, GFX card etc. Fresh install of Win 10 (was making a gaming PC for a friend who couldn't afford their own PC), and set it up with a new local account. Showed as not licenced, inc the watermark, gave it a few days while setting up other items, still watermarked.
Eventually created a new account, and logged in this time using the same MS account I'd previously used, and within 10 mins, watermark vanished, never to return even after switching back to the local account for daily use!
This is good news, finally Windows 10 will be reasonably reliable and will not stall for half an hour every few weeks while "updates" are installed that cause apps to break and add "features" like requiring that when the administrator logs in, the machine "upgrades" for another 30-40 minutes. Windows 10 might finally be actually usable?
Sooo...if Win10 becomes the new old thing that people remember fondly, how horrible must the next full version of Windows be?
Just sayin...
When XP came out, people were like "Aww, I miss Win2k and Win98" (Nobody missed WinME)
When Vista came out, people were like "Aww, I miss XP"
When Win7 came out, people were like "Aww, I still miss XP, but I can live with this since it isn't Vista"
When Win8 came out, people were like "Aww, I remember when Windows had a Start menu. I'll stick with 7"
When Win10 came out, people were like "Aww, I miss Win7 and having a computer that wasn't spying on me".
So, good God, think how bad Win11/365 will be.
Personally, I still miss Win2k's interface. Yeah, I like that old Chicago look...
3.11 for Workgroups was good, for it's time.
95 was good.
NT 3.51 was flaky but luckily wasn't around for long.
NT 4 was OK.
98 was good.
ME was facking awful.
Server 2000 was good.
Server 2003 was good.
XP was excellent.
Vista was facking awful.
Server 2008 was good.
7 was excellent.
Server 2012 was facking awful.
8 was facking awful
8.1 was facking awful.
10 is good apart from the constant updates breaking stuff.
Server 2016 is OK.
Server 2019 is OK.
God I'm old! <LOL>
I have only ever "missed" WinXP & Win7, mostly since their successors (Vista & 8) were so facking awful but also because they just let you get on with your job and didn't need constant handholding/maintenance. Looking at that list, most of the Windows releases have been OK or better. I guess we just have to hope that Win11 is at least an OK.
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