Windows 10 users not wanting to upgrade to Windows 11 or pay Microsoft an unclearly-priced Extended Security Update (ESU) subscription fee may be in luck— an alternative solution from "micropatch" provider 0Patch is available. It will be maintained until 2030 at least. Like ESU providing only security updates, 0Patch is a micropatch provider targeting multiple operating systems with faster security updates that can be applied directly to the OS without restarting, akin to the Hot Patching update for Windows 11.
Now, why 0Patch calls them micropatches is slightly unclear. These seem to be regular old patches, albeit not provided by Microsoft. Microsoft's security updates usually include the same improvements, if not more, but at a later date than 0Patch—and on a rare occasion, 0Patch even gets to point out mistakes in the official patch.
As cool as 0Patch is, it's hard to overlook that Microsoft is at least providing a similar service here in the form of ESU, and ESU may even have more comprehensive security coverage. However, ESU support for most Windows OSes seems to cap at around three extra years, and there's no Free tier in sight— 0Patch has promised to continue supporting Windows 10 until 2030 with Free and Pro (mostly paid, Pro) security patches.
We still don't know how much Microsoft's ESU program will be for mainstream consumers. Education customers seem to get it cheapest for as low as $7 for three years, while Enterprise organizations have to pay $427 for all three years of ESU, with each year getting more expensive. For business customers in particular, 0Patch's yearly subscription pricing models of €25 (~ $27) for the Pro version and €35 (~ $37) for the Enterprise version start looking fairly appealing versus ESU. Microsoft's mainstream ESU pricing had better be competitive when announced at this rate.
In any case, it's clear why solutions like this so quickly garner attention and popularity. By default, most people are opposed to unneeded changes to their hardware, and Windows 10 has maintained its OS market share lead over Windows 11 for about three years. Back in October 2023, Windows 10 held 71.64% market share— and in all the AI hype and new hardware since, Windows 10 has only dropped to 66.1% market share per StatCounter.
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Christopher Harper
Freelance News Writer
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25 CommentsComment from the forums
COLGeek What could possibly go wrong here?
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ezst036 The amount of effort, time, money, that people continue to expend to stay on this platform never ceases to amaze me.
Looks like people will pay subscriptions for Windows after all. Just not to Microsoft.
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chaz_music ezst036 said:
The amount of effort, time, money, that people continue to expend to stay on this platform never ceases to amaze me.Looks like people will pay subscriptions for Windows after all. Just not to Microsoft.
If we are talking about gaming systems and casual PC usage, I could see your point, but that is not all that there is.
As a SOHO user, I have several machines of this vintage that houses engineering and CAD tools that are tied to those machines. If I update those machines, I loose the licenses and have to purchase a new license, or in many cases the vendor has gone to subscription only resulting in a phenomenal annual cost increase for no real improvement in feature set. I never go onto the Internet with those machines after EoL, on both the OS and browsers (Firefox usually).
We are talking over $12K in licenses on the CAD machine. The other machines are loading with legacy software with their licenses, with some no longer offered or defunct. One PC is set up to talk to the old scopes that I have, as well as other old equipment. These are on separate gapped networks with no outside visibility, but boy a maligned USB drive in a scope would wreak havoc. That equipment includes some 2001 1GHz scopes (and others), a 2016 power supply that puts out 140A, and even an Agilent spectrum analyzer. That equipment would cost part of a new house to replace, just to get new OSes on the PCs.
For the casual home user, it does make moving to a Linux platform look attractive. Except there is no easy support for the simple home user. My sister would have no idea how to fix apps not running on Ubuntu. So soon, I will have to move her to a W11 box and teach her all over again how to use it.
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RichardtST As a user of both Win10 (at home) (also linux at home and office!) and Win11 (at the office), I will NEVER allow Win11 on any of my personal machines. It is absolutely hideous. Even explorer is broken. Download a file.... you have to manually refresh the window for it to show. Unzip a file? Oh, let's put the directory at the bottom of the hundreds of files and make you scroll down. And more. So much more. It is absolutely mind boggling that they get away with this garbage. Anyway, Mint with Cinammon isn't too bad once you get the sound to work... and the video... and the wifi to be stable. Then it's OK, as long as you don't play games... sigh...
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Alvar "Miles" Udell ezst036 said:
The amount of effort, time, money, that people continue to expend to stay on this platform never ceases to amaze me.Looks like people will pay subscriptions for Windows after all. Just not to Microsoft.
Most of the people will be business users whose non-transferrable license fees and new hardware costs greatly exceed the price of a subscription, so it makes sense for them to do it, especially since Windows 12 is likely to land before 2030 and they could jump in then for a much longer support term than Windows 11 will give.
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NedSmelly Alvar Miles Udell said:
Most of the people will be business users whose non-transferrable license fees and new hardware costs greatly exceed the price of a subscription, so it makes sense for them to do it, especially since Windows 12 is likely to land before 2030 and they could jump in then for a much longer support term than Windows 11 will give.It does however mean IT support / sysadmin are outsourcing their security to a third party, to some degree. So it relies on a degree of trust on this supplier, if there's no open way to audit their patches.
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ThomasKinsley When users are considering spending money to not upgrade to W11, Microsoft needs to take this as a sign that their latest OS is not popular. They need to expedite W12, and it needs to offer something more useful than Co-Pilot.
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stonecarver ThomasKinsley said:
They need to expedite W12,Oh god please no , not yet.:crazy:
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jlake3 stonecarver said:
Oh god please no , not yet.:crazy:We're all hoping that Windows 12 keeps the trend of "Every other Windows version is good" going, but there's a real danger Microsoft could break the streak here. :grimacing:
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Starman80 COLGeek said:
What could possibly go wrong here?Exactly!
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