November 2024 Microsoft’s Windows 10 Support Options
I have some important information for Windows 10 users about Microsoft’s recently announced extended support options.
Microsoft will offer paid extended support (in US dollars) for Windows 10 after October 14th, 2025
- Home users: $30 will get you one additional year of support, but only one.
- Education users get special rates: $1 for the first year then $2 and then $4. Most people don’t have this option though, they tend to have a PC with a Home user license.
- Business users: Three years of updates are available at increasing rates for each year $61, $122 and then $244 – Now before the canny business people amongst you think about starting with the Home user option and then switching to the Business one later, you can’t switch from Personal to Business without paying that initial $61 as well as the $122. Microsoft saw that one coming. There are other options for bigger businesses who pay for Microsoft’s bigger business products, but I won’t bother to list them here.
What this means for you:
- If your PC can run Windows 11, I recommend upgrading for free before October 2025. For the most part it’s not that different.
- If it can’t upgrade or you really want to delay using Windows 11 for as long as you can, the $30 one-year extension would be a good option while you plan your next steps.
- To those planning on buying a new PC, round about now might be a good time to do so with a variety of Black Friday deals over the next few weeks. If you decide to wait it out, I suspect that after each of the next two summers there might be a significant number of people looking to buy PCs, so the prices just might rise quite a lot, like they did for printers during Covid.
OK I hope that lot makes sense.
