End of Life for Windows 10, it that for real on October 14, 2025?

ComputerWorld.com reported that “Microsoft has spent a lot of time talking about how wonderfully fast Windows 11 PCs are — especially its Copilot+ PCs, which are the focus of a major marketing campaign. However, as the clock ticks down to October, Microsoft is starting to shift from talking about the carrot (those performance improvements) to the stick (the security threats Windows 10 PCs will face).  But Microsoft has a weird history here — the company even patched major Windows XP threats years after officially ending support for that platform, repeatedly breaking its own update policy.” The June 11, 2025 article entitled " Is Microsoft really axing Windows 10? Here’s what you need to know” (https://www.computerworld.com/article/4004399/is-microsoft-really-axing-windows-10.html?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=browser_alert&utm_source=subscribers) included these comments about “Will Microsoft change its mind?”:

While Microsoft has mostly plowed forward with its plans to ax Windows 10, the situation is a mess. We’ve never seen any version of Windows that was this popular right before it was exiting support. Microsoft doesn’t release information about Windows version usage, but third-party estimates put Windows 10 use at 53% of Windows PCs worldwide and 43% of Windows PCs in the US, specifically.

Microsoft initially said that it would immediately stop issuing security updates for Microsoft 365 subscription apps such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on Windows 10 after October 14, 2025. However, the company recently backpedaled: it now says Microsoft 365 apps will be supported with security updates through Oct. 10, 2028.

Additionally, Microsoft’s offer to sell an extra year of security updates to home PC users for $30 is new. It has never done this before. Previously, ESUs have only been for businesses. Microsoft can now shrug and say that people who want to keep using Windows 10 in a secure way have a way to pay for that security — at least for the first year.

I doubt we’ll see Microsoft cancel the big October deadline, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see Microsoft offer a second year of ESUs as an option to home users if Windows 10 use remains high come October 2026.

This also helps Microsoft cover itself. Let’s say there’s a huge Windows 10 security problem and Microsoft executives are dragged in front of Congress to answer for it. They can say that they do offer security updates to consumers, but consumers have to pay for it like any other service. That’s a better answer than, “We sell extended updates to businesses but not to consumers.”

What do you think?