Microsoft will stop selling digital copies of Windows 10 Home and Pro on its website at the end of the month, a first indication that the company is shifting its attention away from the 7-year-old operating system (OS).
31 January 2023 will be the last day Windows 10 is on sale.
The South African version of Microsoft’s website also showed the disclaimer.
Microsoft currently sells a Windows 10 Home licence on its website for R3,099, while a Pro version will set you back R4,399.
The screenshot below shows the disclaimer for Windows 10 sales coming to an end on the Microsoft website.
Legitimate copies of Windows 10 intended for personal use are also available from third-party retailers or are pre-installed on new computers.
It is unclear whether Microsoft’s disclaimer means that it will stop offering new licences to these retailers or that the resellers would have to stop selling the operating system themselves.
Aside from these sources, there are also numerous cheaper product keys for “grey” copies of Windows to buy online.
These are generally spare unused keys resold by enterprises or OEMs that buy Windows licences in bulk.
These keys are generally limited for a single computer and do not allow you to reinstall it on another machine.
There are also many PCs currently on the market that still ship with Windows 10 pre-installed, as opposed to those that come with Microsoft’s latest OS Windows 11.
Having been around since July 2015 and with the once highly-popular Windows 7 reaching end-of-life in 2020, it is no wonder that Windows 10 is Microsoft’s most-used Windows version.
According to GlobalStats StatCounter, the OS was running on 67.95% of Windows systems around the world by December 2022, a long way off the second-most prevalent option Windows 11.
The latter was running on 16.97% of PCs, a year and two months after its launch.
The good news for fans of Windows 10 is that Microsoft will continue to support it with security updates until 14 October 2025.
Windows 11 is available as a free update for users with legitimate Windows 10 licences, but some of its stringent system requirements might necessitate that many will first have to upgrade their machines.