Consumer Reports Urges Microsoft to Extend Support for Windows 10

The renowned nonprofit product-testing organization Consumer Reports is urging Microsoft to extend support for Windows 10. This week, the company sent a letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to highlight the risk of leaving millions of Windows 10 PCs in an unprotected state after the OS reaches end of support on October 14, 2025.

Microsoft announced Windows 11 back in 2021 and said that the OS would require a TPM 2.0 chip and recent AMD and Intel CPUs. In the letter, the organization called out Microsoft and its hardware partners for keeping on the market Windows 10 PCs that couldn’t be upgraded to Windows 11 throughout 2023.

“As of August, 46.2% of people worldwide are still using Windows 10, which is about 646.8 million people based on Microsoft’s own estimates of 1.4 billion people using Windows as an operating system. There are also an estimated 200 million to 400 million PCs worldwide that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11. This is an incredibly high number of stranded Windows 10 machines,” the letter reads.

The missive to Satya Nadella continues by pointing out Microsoft’s hypocrisy to promote Windows 11 as more secure while leaving millions of Windows 10 users on the sideline, unless they pay $30 to get one year of security updates; While Consumer Reports acknowledges that it’s possible to sign up for the Windows 10 ESU program for free, the process isn’t exactly seamless.

“Microsoft has touted a free support option for consumers, but to obtain that support consumers must choose to use Microsoft products such as Bing search or Xbox gaming to earn the 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points necessary to access free support. Tying free support to unrelated Microsoft products forces consumers to jump through unnecessary hoops just so Microsoft can eke out a bit of market share over competitors,” Consumer Reports said.

To be fair, Windows 10 users can also claim one year of Extended Security Updates for the OS by using the Windows Backup app to sync their settings to the cloud, and that process doesn’t require Microsoft Rewards points. Microsoft also recently clarified that Windows 10 Consumer ESU program licenses will support 10 PCs.

All in all, Consumer Reports asked Microsoft to “extend security updates for free to all users who are unable to update their machine while also working to entice more people to get off Windows 10.” Microsoft will offer Extended Security Updates for Windows 10 to organizations for up to 3 years, so maybe the company ought to do the same for consumers. Otherwise, Windows 10 users who are a little tech savvy still have the option to switch to Linux or Google’s Chrome OS Flex.