Still on Windows 10? The safety net ends October 13
Windows 10 stopped getting free security fixes last fall. The one-year paid extension runs out October 13, 2026. A plain-English triage for the machines in your office.
Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025. Machines did not stop working, which is why so many offices still run it, but Microsoft stopped shipping free security fixes. For the past year, a paid program called Extended Security Updates has been the bridge for computers that could not move yet.
That bridge has an end date for its first year: October 13, 2026. It is worth spending one honest hour on this before then.
Why unsupported Windows actually matters
New security holes are found in Windows every month. On a supported system they get patched. On an unsupported system they stay open, and attackers keep a running list of exactly which holes those are. An unpatched machine on your office network is the unlocked side door, and it does not matter how good the front door is.
There is also a paperwork angle. Cyber insurance questionnaires ask whether anything in the office is out of support, and answering that honestly gets harder every month a Windows 10 machine hangs on.
The one-hour triage
Walk the office and sort every computer into three piles.
Pile one: can it upgrade to Windows 11? Most machines bought in the last five or six years can. Settings, Windows Update, and the upgrade offer is either there or it is not. If it is offered, schedule it. The upgrade is free and an evening per machine.
Pile two: too old to upgrade, too important to lose. This is the machine that runs the label printer or the front counter. For these, the choice is a paid extension where still available, replacement, or taking the machine off the internet entirely if its job does not need it. A replacement desktop costs real money, but so does the week you lose when the irreplaceable machine is the one that gets hit.
Pile three: too old to matter. The spare in the back room that nobody has logged into since winter. Retire it, and wipe the drive before it leaves the building.
The honest version of "we will get to it"
Every office has a reason the migration has not happened: the one program that might not survive the move, the busy season, the machine that belongs to the person who hates change. Those reasons are real. The list of open security holes grows anyway.
If the triage above turns up a pile-two machine you are not sure about, that is a fifteen-minute conversation, not a project. Ask us, the first conversation is free, and sometimes the answer really is that the old machine can stay, just not on the network.