Microsoft really, really, really wants you to ditch Windows 10 and upgrade to Windows 11 already. (Better yet, just buy a new PC!) The company says that 2025 is “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh,” and they’re trying their best to will that slogan into reality.
Case in point: A new support page says that Microsoft Office 365 will lose support on Windows 10 in October, the same time the OS is shelved. “Microsoft 365 apps will no longer be supported on Windows 10 after it reaches end of support on October 14, 2025,” says the page.
That doesn’t mean installed apps will suddenly cease to function on October 14th. They’ll simply be “unsupported.” Using the cloud-enhanced versions of the Office 365 apps and their many companion tools might “cause performance and reliability issues over time,” and you can bet that these apps will start to nag you to move to a newer OS or machine almost constantly once that date passes.
I’ll reiterate that Office 365 apps currently installed on Windows 10 won’t simply switch off in October. And if you’ve bought the standalone non-subscription version of Microsoft Office, you can count on it to keep working as long as your computer does. There’s also no technical reason that apps like Word and Excel would stop working in their web-hosted and browser-based flavors, whether in Edge, Chrome, or whatever other browser you use. But Microsoft has indicated that performance and security may degrade as time moves past the October deadline, and they won’t guarantee compatibility for those who decline to upgrade.
The software giant points out that they made similar ultimatums for its apps on Windows 7 and Windows 8, and that keeping current with your OS is part of the “Modern Lifecycle Policy.” All well and good, I suppose, but the fact of the matter is that Windows 10 still works great for a lot of people and they have no real reason to move on — apart from the fact that Microsoft will stop supporting it at an arbitrary date.
Microsoft might counter my point by saying that Windows 10 will be 10 years old in October. I’d riposte that Windows 10 was supposed to be “the last version of Windows” once upon a time. You can’t blame your customers for preferring your old hype over your new hype. That’s especially true if said customer happens to be a massive business that doesn’t want to spend big cash on unnecessary upgrades.
Windows 11 adoption isn’t where Microsoft wants it to be. In fact, it might be treading water — or even going backwards — compared to Windows 10. With their extremely public and pervasive push for upgrades to Copilot+ laptops and Microsoft’s premium AI service, the company seems to think that nagging both corporate customers and consumers into upgrades is the right strategy… and Office 365 appears to be the latest front in that particular branding battle.
With Windows’ dominance looking a lot less, well, dominant as of late, I wonder if Microsoft will come to regret how hard they’re pushing customers by the end of 2025. It’s a good thing Microsoft doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to introduce yet another version of Windows.
