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Microsoft is going to end support for Windows 10 next year 2025, on Oct 14th. The tech giant has however allowed users to continue operating Windows 10 securely with the Extended Security Updates (ESU), but for that they will need to pay the price from now on. All customers along with businesses must buy ESU license if they plan on using the operating system after the cutoff date next year.
Microsoft has decided the price for businesses to be 61 dollars for the first year. The price then doubles in the second year to 122 dollars. In the next year, the price will double again to a surprising sum of 244 dollars from 122 dollars. Also, the ESU plans are cumulative so that in case any customer decides to enter the second-year plan, they will need to pay for the first year as well. However, these pricings are only given for commercial businesses and organizations. The amount that the customers have to pay has not been disclosed yet and will be shared later. The details of the price intended for regular customers will be shared on Microsoft’s “customer end of support page”. Also, for educational organizations, the details for Windows 10 end of support will be updated in the “Microsoft Education Blog’.
Microsoft explains that these Extended Security Updates were not meant as a long-term solution to begin with. They were more like a “temporary bridge”. Microsoft further states that customers can purchase the ESU license for their Windows 10, if they don’t plan on upgrading to Windows 11 for some reason, which will be starting on October 2024, one year before the final cutoff date.
There will be a discount of 25 percent from the total amount for businesses that apply Microsoft’s cloud-based update solution, for example, Intune or Windows Autopatch. With the offered discount, the total rate drops to 45dollars per user (available up to 5 devices) in the first year.
In addition to that, Microsoft has been very generous with schools and educational organizations with a much bigger discount. Schools will need to pay $1 in the first year, with a doubled sum of $2 for the second year, and $4 for the third year consecutively. Although there haven’t been any exciting discount offerings for the consumers yet, but they can keep their fingers crossed as there’s still a long time left for these licenses to go on sale.
What Microsoft basically wants is for users to migrate to Windows 11 gradually. However, there are millions of PC users who are unable to upgrade to the latest version, Windows 11. This is because Windows 11 demands a more secured and more advanced hardware while the company’s security push with the latest OS limits users to upgrade from Windows 10 smoothly. To further alert customers, it has been clearly mentioned that Windows 11 can be supported only on CPUs that are released after 2018. Furthermore, it works only for devices supporting TPM security.
In the past, Windows 11 upgrade was also given free for Windows 10 that could match the minimum hardware requirement needed to support it. According to data, about 69% of consumers are still operating Windows 10 with the contrast of only 29% of users employing Windows 11. Although it’s very unlikely that Microsoft can close such a huge gap in the coming months, leaving customers with the only option of paid security updates to continue using Windows 10 securely.
