With all the talk about Windows 7 reaching end-of-life, you might be thinking “When does Windows 10 reach end-of-life?” It’s actually not as far away as you might think. As it stands right now (as this date is subject to change), Windows 10 reaches end of life on October 14, 2025. However, that could change. Microsoft has made no indication on their future plans for the Windows operating system at this point.
In the past, they’ve released a major version every four years or so, and generally, only every other one has been usable:
- Windows 2000: Great
- Windows ME: Junk
- Windows XP: Great!
- Windows Vista: Garbage
- Windows 7: Great!
- Windows 8/8.1: Meh…
- Windows 10: Great!
What that means is that, if you follow their previous history, the next major version of Windows could be an utter failure. However, it would not be surprising to see Windows 8.1 retire in 2023 (like scheduled) and then Windows 10 used as the base operating system going forward for future improvements and becoming just “Windows” kind of like Apple has done with Macintosh. That being said, Microsoft is moving towards “as-a-service” (aka subscriptions) for pretty much everything they do, so we also wouldn’t be surprised to see some sort of subscription service coming for Windows (Windows 10 licenses are already available via Office 365).
So what does that all mean? Nothing at the moment. We don’t know Windows’ future, but hopefully we will as we get closer to 2025. Meanwhile, you have a few years before you have to worry. We’ll let you know when we know more.