Some of your classmates may have heard about it.
In January of this year, Microsoft officially issued an announcement that official support for Win10 will only be available until October 2025.
More specifically, on October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop security updates and technical support for the vast majority of Win10 versions.
You know, Win10 has a huge user base at the moment.
And the drama is that after Microsoft's announcement, the number of users of Win10 has risen instead of falling.
According to the latest statistics from statcounter, in February this year, Win10's market share reached 67.23%.
(图源 statcounte)
This figure is still a steady increase from 66.45% in January, and is far ahead of Win11's 28.18%.
And just recently, there was another bad news.
That is, if everyone is still using Win10 at that time, after the official stops the security updates and technical support for Win10, it will be necessary to give Microsoft a "tribute".
In terms of price, Microsoft says that each PC will start at 441 yuan.
It is worth mentioning that 441 yuan is only the cost of the first year, and it is directly doubled in the second year, and so on.
Speaking of which, I have to introduce the origin of this fee.
This fee is called Paid Extended Security Update Service, or ESU for short.
Many users may not have heard of this service before this.
To put it simply, ESU is a set of extended security support services launched by Microsoft for Windows systems that have been discontinued from security support.
After purchasing, users will receive regular official security patch pushes every month to ensure the security of users' computers.
Without official security support, some new security vulnerabilities will not be fixed, and will likely cause losses.
(Source: Microsoft's official website, the same below)
Previously, the service was only available to enterprises and institutions, but this is the first time that Microsoft has opened up the ESU for Win10 to all users.
However, it is not difficult to understand that, as mentioned earlier, Win10's market share has exceeded 67% and is still growing.
If Microsoft doesn't do something about it, about 70% of all devices will be exposed to viruses and hackers.
Microsoft will definitely not be able to carry this pot.
For Microsoft, it would be a reasonable option to expand the ESU, which was originally only available to enterprises, to all Win10 users.
As for the price, this time it's basically the same as the ESU of Win7 back then.
That is, the price is $61 in the first year, and doubles and stacks in the second year.
To put it simply, if you want to use ESU services for three years, it will cost a total of 427 US dollars (about 3090 yuan).
The key thing is that Microsoft predicts the user's prediction in advance.
That is, no matter what year it starts, it will be charged according to the price level of the corresponding time.
In other words, if you're going to use Microsoft's ESU service to catch up on all the security patches in the third year, you'll have to cover the cost of the first and second years as well.
Microsoft's reasoning is also strong, and that is that security services are cumulative.
Of course, if you want to pay for security services without paying for them, then upgrading to Win11 is the easiest way to avoid ESUs and keep your PC secure.
I wonder what choice you will make?
Of course, if nothing else, this time it is estimated to be the same as Win7.
That is, after Win10 is stopped, security software will most likely stand up to provide follow-up security support for the majority of users.
It has to be said that although Win11 was released back in 2021, its market share is still far behind Win10 today.
On the one hand, many old computers cannot meet the configuration requirements of Win11, and on the other hand, there are not many new features of Win11.
Based on this, many people feel that there is no need to upgrade.
However, after the shutdown of Win10, Win11's share is expected to grow significantly, after all, security is still very important.
What do you think about this?
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