People can be sentimental about all sorts of things. A ticket stub for an event you barely remember, a memento from a family holiday, some childhood art in which you just about identify the subject. Things you don’t want to let go of; it is part of being human.
But when it comes to tech, the rules are slightly different. In this case, a clean break and a fresh start with the more modern option is often advised. When that warning is not heeded, you are essentially living on borrowed time.
As of Tuesday, Microsoft no longer supports Windows 10 for free, with the software having reached “End of Life” status. That means no more regular updates for the operating system and the millions of machines worldwide that are still running it – unless you pay for the extended support, which will keep you covered until October next year.
It is not just about getting new features – the end of support means no more security patches either, unless in exceptional circumstances. Over time, software you depend on may also cease to work. That leaves millions of users facing a choice: upgrade to Windows 11, or risk your machine and its data.
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Let’s not be overly dramatic. If you decide not to upgrade or pay the fee for extended support, your Windows 10 laptop won’t suddenly stop working. Nor will it put out a siren call to hackers to descend on your machine en masse. But over time, security holes that appear and go unpatched will put you more at risk.
There are still plenty of people who will continue to carry on using the old operating system, despite the risks. According to figures from StatCounter Global Stats, more than 40 per cent of Windows users globally are using Windows 10 – or at least they were by last month. It is unlikely they have rushed in significant numbers to shift to Windows 11 ahead of the deadline.
So why didn’t people upgrade before now? There are different reasons. Some people don’t feel like it was worth the effort for few noticeable changes. Others didn’t like the few changes that Windows 11 brought. But one of the most common could be that while their machine was good enough to run Windows 10, it doesn’t meet the more stringent requirements from Windows 11. That includes the CPU, the brains of the machine, and a newer version of a security chip – the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM 2.0. That requirement alone would exclude many older machines that are otherwise working fine.
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The restriction applied to some of Microsoft’s own devices. The original Surface laptop, launched in 2017, four years before the release of Windows 11, isn’t officially capable of upgrading; neither is the original Surface Book. You can force the upgrade on to a machine that technically doesn’t support it, but that comes with its own risks, including no support from Microsoft should you encounter a problem.
However you get there, the upgrade is free. That is how much Microsoft wants us to adopt it. There was a point when Microsoft charged for access to new operating systems. In fact, the first time it offered a free upgrade was when it launched Windows 10; that was officially only for a limited time for users of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, although the upgrade path stayed open unofficially for much longer.
All things must end, though. And it was inevitable that Microsoft would stop supporting Windows 10, despite our attachment to it. It has been more than 10 years since Windows 10 launched, and four since Microsoft unveiled Windows 11.
You don’t have to stop using Windows 10. No one will force you to turn off the machine and throw it in the back of a drawer. But we all know how this will end. And there have been plenty of warnings about the implications of using a potentially vulnerable system, particularly for businesses.
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In 2021, the HSE was hit by a catastrophic cyberattack that paralysed the health system and left the private data of Irish people in the hands of the hackers. It took weeks for all the systems that had been affected by the ransomware attack to be decrypted and restored.
Although the problem had been caused by an infected email attachment, almost 30,000 computers running Windows 7 – a system for which extended support ended in 2020 – also posed a security problem of their own.
Security experts have been warning for months about the repercussions of companies dragging their feet on this one. In the current tech climate, with companies such as Oracle, Discord and even once-staid retailer Marks & Spencer all being hit by cyberattacks in recent months, it is even more important to shore up defences.
Few of us like change. And although we may resent Microsoft forcing our hand on Windows updates, this is one area where we can’t ignore the warnings.
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