A California man has launched a last-ditch battle to force Microsoft to issue a reprieve for Windows 10, which is due to reach end of life in a matter of months.
Over 40% of Windows devices still run the ten-year-old operating system, according to StatsCounter, with its successor, Windows 11, only overtaking the venerable platform in market share earlier in June.
Lawrence Klein, who owns two Windows 10 laptops, filed a complaint in the San Diego Superior Court, demanding Microsoft continue to offer free support for Windows 10 until the aging systems’ market share drops below 10%.
Klein’s suit, reproduced by Court House News, claims that the end of free security support will make 240 million Windows 10 devices obsolete because of their lack of a neural processing unit (NPU).
The NPU requirement for Windows 11 was part of a Microsoft “stratagem…to use its dominant position in the OS market to achieve a dominant position in the market for generative AI” the suit continues.
That’s because “forcing customers to purchase new devices (or face financial repercussions if they did not) and running Windows 11, thereby [ensures] a large user base that would access this product by default.”
But, Klein argues, “it is likely that many millions of users will not buy new devices or pay for extended support. These users—some of whom are businesses storing sensitive consumer data—will be at a heightened risk of a cyberattack or other data security incident, a reality of which Microsoft is well aware.”
As well as demanding ongoing free support, the suit calls for “clear disclosures to consumers purchasing a Windows OS license” about the length of support for Windows compatibility.
The suit goes wider though, claiming Microsoft’s “bricking” of older devices will unleash a tide of e-waste, and that “If these were all folded laptops, stacked one on top of another, they would make a pile 600km taller than the moon.”
Klein claims the four year cross over between Windows 10 and Windows 11 was much shorter than those of previous generations of Windows, which were typically seven to eight years.
Moreover, Klein’s suit claims “Windows 11 is wildly unpopular” with few “enticing features” that would encourage users to upgrade.
It also claims there is little demand for “AI PCs” as “there remains no application that demands the new hardware.”
At the same time, the suit argues, Microsoft is benefiting from a broader shift to AI, through its CoPilot software and by OpenAI’s use of Azure.
While Klein’s suit is comprehensive in skewering Microsoft’s upgrade policy it’s hard to see Windows 10 users getting a last minute stay of execution, if only because courts move at their own pace.
In the meantime, enterprises and consumers are being warned to upgrade to get ahead of the undoubted security threat the OS’s EOL poses.
Just last month the NCSC flagged the security risks of delaying cutting across and released updated “configuration packs for Microsoft Windows”. It cited the impact of the WannaCry ransomware attack on unpatched versions of Windows XP back in 2017.
Likewise, the US’s CISA has regular flagged up the threat Windows 10’s demise poses.
