As Microsoft will get able to sunset Windows 10, safety help is scheduled to finish in October. You may get a one-year extended security update for $30. However if you wish to follow Home windows 10 for one more yr, you is likely to be higher off with Microsoft’s free option — you will simply want to make use of cloud backup and join it together with your OneDrive account.
The power to get free updates on Home windows 10 is a reasonably large deal as a result of it’s nonetheless essentially the most broadly used Home windows OS, accounting for just over 53% of installs as of Could 2025. That leaves hundreds of thousands of individuals with out safety help in only a few months except they improve. So the cloud backup choice offers customers a means out with out costing them any cash.
The one potential challenge 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 monthly for 100GB of cloud storage, a yr of OneDrive nonetheless prices lower than the $30 for a yr of further safety updates, however it might nonetheless trigger frustration amongst some clients.
Home windows 10 was launched a decade in the past, in July 2015.
Microsoft might be rolling out the ESU wizard in July 2025.
The way to 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 offered 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 may have the choice to buy as much as three years of further updates. So, this is not a long-term answer, however slightly offers 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 techniques, however Microsoft’s string of unpopular decisions together with Windows 11 compatibility issues have saved the prior technology OS round so much longer than it usually could be.
