Unless Microsoft isn’t he already succeeded very clearly he wants it upgrade your Windows 10 PC this yearthe company announced that it will stop supporting Office applications on the older OS in October.
ua blog postMicrosoft has confirmed that in order to continue using the Microsoft 365 suite of apps on your PC, you “will need to upgrade to Windows 11” by October 14—the same day that support for Windows 10 will end. And in many cases, upgrading to Windows 11 it will also require upgrading your machine.
That’s because Windows 11 has some pretty tough ones hardware requirements which millions of older machines cannot satisfy, and Microsoft has already confirmed that he has no intention of deviating from these preconditions.
So confident is he of the move that Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer, declared 2025 “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh.”
“Whether your current PC needs a refresh or has security vulnerabilities that require the latest hardware protection, now is the time to move forward with a new Windows 11 PC,” he wrote in another blog postearlier this month.
It’s fair to say that some of the machines that won’t meet those minimum hardware requirements might be approaching 10 years oldand it could probably use an upgrade anyway. But it’s also true that the sheer number of Windows 10 machines out there—data released Statcounter in December 2024 suggests that there are almost twice as many PCs running Windows 10 as there are running Windows 11—which means it’s unlikely they’ll all switch before support ends.
There’s some good news for all Windows 10 users hoping to keep using their Office apps. Just like the operating system itself, Microsoft 365 isn’t going to fall off a cliff and stop working on October 14th. Microsoft confirmed that Office applications will “continue to function as before” but that there may be “performance and reliability issues over time” as security and feature updates stop coming.
If this is your tactic, it might be worth considering Microsoft Extended Security Updateswhich are offered to consumers for the first time. Users can pay $30 to keep their PC up-to-date for a year, while businesses can protect their machines for up to three years. This won’t prevent your apps from becoming obsolete, of course, but it will at least help prevent nasties while you figure out your next move.