- Extended Security Updates ‘free’.
- Users need to backup (less than 5GB data) to OneDrive.
- Sluggish momentum for Windows 11 upgrades.
Windows desktop users unable or unwilling to upgrade to Windows 10 will likely be aware of the impending cut-off date, October 14th, as the time after which their operating system will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
Users have had the option to extend cybersecurity coverage for an additional 12 months for $30 a while now, but Microsoft is offering a new way out of some users’ quandary, and letting them continue to use their desktops safely.
The company has announced that the Extended Security Updates plan has a free option, as long as users invoke Windows Backup to synchronise their data to OneDrive.
The default OneDrive per-user allocation is 5GB, so to make a cloud copy, users with larger amounts of data will have to upgrade to or already be paying for a higher tier of Microsoft 365: Basic, offering 100GB of storage at $1.99 a month, or Personal, which gives a terabyte of OneDrive space for $9.99 a month.
Business users have been given more leeway, with an option to buy three years’ security updates and support for machines that can’t upgrade to Windows 11.
Windows 11 upgrade
As of May 2025, over half of Windows installs were of version 10 (53%) or earlier (around 3%). The Windows 11 user base stands at 43% of installs (figures from StatCounter). That leaves around 850 million upgrades to Windows 11 or needing to transfer to the Extended Security Updates programme, with a little more than four months until the old OS stops receiving security patches.
According to Lansweeper, in 2022, less than half of machines running Windows 10 (43%) were physically able to upgrade to Windows 11 – that is, either had no TPM 2.0 encryption chip on-board, and/or possessed insufficient memory or hard drive space to accommodate the new OS.
In enterprise settings, IT teams seem to have been more proactive identifying which desktops can be upgraded than their colleagues in smaller businesses. The consumer segment lags behind the furthest in upgrading.
ControlUp‘s enterprise telemetry as of August 2024 sampled 750,000 endpoints in large organisations, finding 12% needed new hardware – that is, replacement.
Canalys research, which factored in consumer devices, SMBs and PCs in education, found that one in three Windows 10 PCs can’t physically be upgraded. It also surmised that upgrade to Windows 11 would create up to 240 million units of e-waste, unless older machines could be repurposed.
Lack of momentum
Given that corporate procurement processes often take months (although many such processes will be currently under way), and that migration and user training are also necessary, it seems likely that up to a third of the world’s Windows 10 fleet will either not be upgraded to Windows 11 by October 14 this year, or be replaced with new hardware, or be under the Extended Security Updates scheme (whether free or paid).
Despite the best efforts of Microsoft – including full page pop-ups on desktops running Windows 10 – the speed of the changeover is far too slow. The consequences for the cybersecurity industry and the environmentally-conscious are profound.
While many users will have less than 5GB of data and a fast-enough internet connection to push their files to OneDrive, many will not, and will be unable or unwilling to purchase a higher Microsoft 365 tier or an Extended Security Updates plan.
That leaves a user base possibly numbering in the hundreds of millions running an operating system that is no longer secure, and won’t be patched nor updated.
