There’s various scripts and tools you can use to flag yourself in for the extended updates without having to make an account, sign up for backup services, spend money or Bing points, etc. So I ran one of those on my computer (‘cause I don’t feel like changing) and my kid’s 4th gen Optiplex (since it’s ineligible) and now it’s Fall 2026’s problem.
The other day I received the offer to enable Extended Security Updates so I did so on an older notebook that I travel with and the desktop computer my parents use. Now I have a year to think about what to do. (Also I am getting a new iPhone this month and would prefer not to have two large expenses at the same time.)
I wasn’t going to upgrade because my main computer was working just fine (note past tense) and I don’t see a reason to fix what ain’t broke.
Then the motherboard died.
After consultation with someone who knows more about computer hardware than I do, and considering choices, I decided that it was time for a new computer (portions of the old one being 15+ years old), Determined what would meet my needs and expectations and I should be receiving it in a day or two and getting down to set up and installation of my preferred software.
Meanwhile, I’m getting by on a cheap laptop I picked up during an Amazon Prime Day, intended as a backup for occasions such as this, or for travel. It doesn’t do everything I want a computer to do but enables me to get by in the short term.
This laptop is a Windows 11 machine.
There were ads during the set up. It was annoying but in a minor way.
What actually WAS annoying AND a major pain in the ass was that the Windows 11 set up is a monster memory hog. Here I had a pristine laptop - brand new, never used, nothing on it. It ran out of memory during the set up. Yep, part way during installation I get a pop up saying the laptop is out of memory, please delete unneeded files. WTF? Did a disk clean up anyway, freed up a bit of memory, and resumed. Again - out of memory, please delete unneeded files. Again, WTF? I noticed it had an option to add a “device with additional memory”.
Fortunately, I had a portable SSD harddrive. Plugged it in. Installation resumed, completed. Apparently it cleaned up after itself because the hard drive is clean and I have free memory on the laptop again.
But - WTF???
I have a “Windows 11 ready” laptop without sufficient memory to load Windows 11? And apparently the installation balloons up to massive memory hog then deflates again? One more time… WTF?
Well, I bought the laptop in part to learn about Windows 11 so… mission accomplished?
That does indeed sound FUBAR; 4 GB of RAM and 64 of disk should suffice to at least install Windows 11.
Do I understand this correctly?
Windows 10 is no longer being updated. But wait! You can PAY to get another year of security? And then you get to “upgrade” to 11, possibly requiring the purchase of a license or new hardware?
As someone said earlier, the change from 10 to 11 doesn’t seem to add any value. So how is this anything other than a rent-seeking money grab?
Forget it, and f*** these people - I’ll take my goddam un-updated chances out of spite.
Yeah, I was going to stick with 10 but, as I said, my computer died.
Of course it’s a money-seeking action on the point of Microsoft. Ditto for all the ads trying to sell you subscriptions during the installation.
If I didn’t have some software that is incompatible with Linux I’d be on that operating system. Meanwhile, I’ll use as little of Microsucks as I can get away with.
Nitpick but your computer didn’t run out of memory. Instead it ran out of hard drive space.
And as for this, the Extended Security Updates program does not cost anything.
There seem to be paid and free options. But of course, the free options involve activating OneDrive and jumping through hoops:
Forgive me if I’m blowing this out of proportion, but I think this sort of thing is a key problem of our age. Companies no longer seem to be in the business of creating a good product and selling it. Rather, they seem to be in the business of finding ways to force people to cough up money without adding any value. People aren’t customers who control demand anymore - they’re just targets for fleecing.
Subscription models and endless pay-to-play for “features” is a consequence of this attitude. I’m pretty sick of it.
I understand that. Nonetheless “out of memory” was how Microsucks own program described it.
It might be that it ran out of virtual memory.
Nope, pretty sure it was the hard drive. Not that I’m an expert but if it wasn’t that why would plugging in a portable hard drive work? It didn’t even specify that, just “plug in a device with more space”. Also, if it wasn’t the hard drive why tell the user to remove files?
My very limited research is that the installer takes up disk space then does, indeed, “clean up” after itself. Why? damifino. Seems stupid and inconvenient.
I wish I could have kept my old computer Frank (for “Frankenstein”, i.e. assembled out of parts) going longer but it was no longer feasible. There would have been hassles with that, too, but hassles I am more familar with.
About a half an hour ago I got the false cheery “Let’s set up Edge, the Bestest Browser Ever!” pop up while I was on another browser and the bastard wouldn’t go away. No, I do not want to set up Edge. No, I do not want to import anything from another computer or account (that’s why I set up a local account on this laptop), and I can’t do that because my “another computer” is dead anyhow (although the information is backed up). I had to sign out, sign back in, and tweak the settings to Edge was no longer the default browser. Hopes that solves the problem.
Really, it’s all about selling you shit these days, whether you want it or not. Everything exists to extract wealth from anyone not a billionaire.
I don’t like this timeline.
You sure it was Windows giving you that error and not some factory installed malware…? Was it some no name laptop bought off a random Amazon seller?
I didn’t have to do anything with OneDrive to activate the ESU, the option to enroll in it was on the Windows update page in Settings. I think there was a simple cmd line to add it I found on Reddit, if it doesn’t show for you by default.
I also bought a new laptop with Windows 11 just because my old one was slow anyway. Yeah I had to tweak a bunch of settings to get some cosmetic and search options to go back to how they were, not a huge deal. Didn’t see any ads, really not sure what people are talking about with that…
Adding to the discussion…
I have a 2-year-old Lenovo Yoga laptop, 8 GB RAM, 250 GB SSD. It came with Windows 10 installed. Shortly after I bought it, I started getting messages about upgrading to Win 11, which I have ignored.
Until last Friday evening, when I bit the bullet and started the upgrade. It took about 45 minutes to download, then another hour or so to complete the first phase of the installation. At that point, it asked me to schedule a reboot to complete the installation, and it told me it might take several hours to complete.
I scheduled the reboot for 10:00 pm and I didn’t look at the computer until Saturday morning. It had completed everything by about 1:00 am and it has worked flawlessly ever since. Everything looks the same except the taskbar has changed somewhat, and a right-click on a file or folder has a different look. At least, those are the only changes that I’ve noticed. My desktop looks just the same and the few apps I run work as they always have.
No ads. And I just noticed that there is a Windows.old folder, which is probably taking up a bunch of disk space. Google tells me that this folder will be auto-deleted in 30 days, so I’ll just wait for that to happen.
I think it is more a case of companies not being content with a sale resulting in a single financial transaction but wanting more routes to revenue, some but not all of which are about gathing information about you. Here are a few examples
- Stores loyalty cards to track your purchaing habits
- Computer games with micropayments
- The push to lease rather than buy your car
- Having a low advertised price with a load of hidden extras when you are pretty much committed to buy.
While my computer can be upgraded to Windows 11 I have not done so. Windows 11 seems to make it very difficult to prevent Microsoft taking huge amounts of personnal data about me it appears to be driven by wanting to create a virtual personnal assistant for me that knows all about me and can act autonomously on my behalf. I might be able ot switch the functionality off but not the data transfer.
I am not knowledgable enough to be comfortable ot switch to Linux so will probably go to windows 11 at some point but in the meantime I am wondering whether to pay Microsoft in cash for security updates or trade for it with it my personnal data via one drive.
To get the extension I’m seeing one has to sign in with a Microsoft account. I don’t have one, don’t want one.
But I look it up and the first thing they want to do is back up my info to the cloud. I don’t want to back up my info to the cloud, I just want the extension. Any way to get this piece of s*** extension without exposing my information to an unwanted cloud backup?
See here:How to get another free year of updates for your Windows 10 PC - Ars Technica
What if I don’t want to store anything with Microsoft?
We know that some of you want absolutely nothing to do with a Microsoft account, despite the company’s push to require one as a precondition of using any version of Windows 11. If this describes you, the good news is that you can enroll in the ESU program without needing to stay enrolled in Windows Backup or without staying signed in to a Microsoft account at all.
Looks like you have to create an account, but you can get rid of it after activating the ESU
Brian
Just make a fake account with fake info, use it for the extension, and then sign out afterward. Don’t let it sync anything.
Maybe even request a deletion of your account afterward.
I’ve coined the term “consumer serfdom” for this. You can’t buy what you actually want, you can only buy what the powers that be care to sell you, take it or leave it.