Heads up, Windows 10 users 👀 — Microsoft just announced a free update extension for those not quite ready (or able) to jump to Windows 11. It’s called the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, and it’ll keep your PC safe with critical updates until October 2026 — that’s a full extra year after official support ends in October 2025.
To qualify, your device needs to be running Windows 10 version 22H2 (Home, Pro, Pro Education, or Workstation editions) with all the latest updates installed. You’ll also need to sign in with your Microsoft account and stay logged in (if you don’t have one just create a new one – anything with the outlook.com email address for example) — Microsoft asks you to re-authenticate at least every 60 days to keep things active.
If you’re in the European Economic Area (EEA), you’re in luck — it’s completely free. Outside the EEA, there might be a small fee, but Microsoft says they’re working on low-cost or free options for older PCs that can’t handle Windows 11. Just note: Enterprise, Education, or managed devices (like ones connected to a company network or MDM) don’t qualify for this free deal. You can sign up right through your Windows Update settings once the notification pops up (go to Settings > windows update and see if the offer is there).
Hi! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any problems with hackers?
My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended
up losing many months of hard work due to no data backup. Do you have any solutions to
protect against hackers?
we could ask AI what the best defence would be against hackers – be it on the pc, network, website level – but i’ll leave that up to you and you can tailor your AI query to suit your circumstance: i’ll just answer from experience – there is only one method of protection against hackers – backup, backup, backup – and then back up that backup with a second layer of backup. if you think about it – every one of the big multi national organisations that got into the news for getting hacked failed to get their data back through technical means – so they either paid the ransom quietly or redid the whole system at huge cost and loss. They spent millions on tech gadgets and still got hacked…they spent hundreds of thousands to recover the situation and still suffered loss. kinda begs the question, why didn’t they just restore from backups?