While European consumers have been given another year of grace, there is still some unhappiness within business. “We have customers asking us why they haven’t been given an extra year of support in the same way that European consumers have,” said Alex Pearce, chief strategist for Microsoft at reseller Softcat.
He also believes that, despite the favorable conditions, education establishments won’t necessarily have the best deal. “As Microsoft brings in more and more security features, Windows 10 users are going to be left behind.” He said it was a particular concern, as there were plenty of indications that education organizations suffer a higher proportion of cyber attacks.
There are plenty of other worries for businesses. Proctor believes that most companies have already upgraded their desktop software, but he warned that it wasn’t just about PCs. “Look at medical equipment,” he said, “it could be that a hospital has MRI machines that are linked up to Windows 10 machines. If the decision is taken to upgrade all PCs to Windows 11, what’s going to happen to that [MRI] machine? Is it still going to work?”
