Many are unhappy about Microsoft’s Windows 10 retirement plans, but a California man appears to be angrier than most. He’s sued Redmond over the matter, and is demanding continued free Win 10 updates until the OS’s popularity wanes.
Complainant Lawrence Klein is identified in the filing [PDF] only as a California resident who owns two Windows 10 laptops that can’t be updated to Windows 11 due to their lack of a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM), which is required for the updated OS to run. Microsoft designed that restriction to improve security, but the company previously had a workaround that would allow you to install the OS without TPM.
“With only three months until support ends for Windows 10, it is likely that many millions of users will not buy new devices or pay for extended support,” Klein’s lawyers argue in their complaint. Support for Windows 10 ends on October 14.
Klein’s argument boils down to claims that Microsoft violated California’s business, advertising, and consumer legal relief regulations by forcing unnecessary upgrades on Windows 10 users and leaving those who choose not to upgrade without necessary security updates.
Users actually don’t have to switch to Windows 11 to keep getting support after October, however. Microsoft currently charges $30 for the first year of extended Windows 10 support, and you get this year free if you use Microsoft Reward points or sign in with a Microsoft account and sync your data to the cloud.
But Klein wants the court to force Microsoft to offer free support for Windows 10 “until the number of devices running the OS falls below 10% of total Windows users.” Alternatively, his lawyers said, the court could also force Microsoft to loosen those unnecessary hardware restrictions.
A rushed phaseout
The complaint says that, unlike with previous Windows phaseouts, the end of life for Windows 10 is premature.
After Windows XP, which lost support seven years after Vista’s release, all the subsequent versions of Windows ended their lives eight years after their successor launched. Windows 11 has only been on the market for four years, meaning that Windows 10 should have another four years of support available if Microsoft had adhered to the same retirement calendar.
The complaint also notes that Windows 10 still had more than 50 percent market share at the time Microsoft announced the phaseout plans last year. This has since changed, with Windows 11 finally overtaking Windows 10 in July when the new OS reached 53.5 percent of Windows installations, but nearly 43 percent are still on Win 10.
That’s far more than prior phaseouts, the complaint contends.
“Each time Microsoft announced that it would end support for an operating system, the number of active users had declined to a small overall percentage of the operating systems in use,” Klein’s legal team maintains.
In essence, Klein argues, the Windows 11 transition has been forced, artificial, and unfriendly to users, while potentially being incredibly profitable for Microsoft and the PC makers that license Windows from it.
“Windows 11 does not present many enticing features that warrant an upgrade, and consumers do not find the new interface appealing,” the complaint continues. “This sluggish demand for Windows 11 presents a unique challenge to Microsoft in the race to corner the AI market.”
By forcing users to transition to a PC that’s fully compatible with Windows 11 and Copilot, Microsoft could build an advantage over competing AI firms.
“Consumers do not need to seek out or install Copilot because it is already integrated into the OS. Microsoft can also actively promote Copilot within Windows 11 settings, making it a central AI experience,” the complaint states. “In contrast, other AI companies … rely on web-based or app-based distribution, meaning they must convince users to opt in rather than being the default AI assistant.”
In other words, Microsoft and the OEM manufacturers of AI PCs and other Windows 11 devices have a strong incentive to make 2025 year of the Windows 11 refresh, and need to push satisfied Windows 10 users along.
Microsoft didn’t respond to questions for this story. ®
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