Microsoft has revealed that Windows 10 users will be given free feature and functionality updates for exactly ten years from the time they first buy the operating system – for example, on a new device.

This was revealed through Microsoft’s latest update to its Windows lifecyle fact sheet. The document lists a number of milestone dates for each version of Windows, including their release dates, end of mainstream support, end of extended support, and end of sales.

The one most people want to know about is Windows 10, and Microsoft has said that mainstream support will terminate on October 13, 2020. However, extended support runs until October 14, 2025, which means a full ten years’ worth of updates and security patches.

“Microsoft’s intention is that you will get 10 years minimum of updates for Windows 10, both feature and security updates, from when you get it,” Gartner analyst Steve Kleynhans told Computerworld. Kleynhans is Gartner’s Microsoft specialist, and has been fully briefed on the company’s plans after pressing it for answers.

“They intend to provide the full 10 years of support, which means giving feature and security updates for that computer for 10 years, provided the OEM continues to support the device,” Kleynhans confirmed.

Previously, Microsoft has only ever provided ten years of support for each version of Windows from the date the OS first went on sale, which meant that if you bought Windows 7 two years after its release, you’d only get eight years of support.

Kleynhans declined to share everything that Microsoft had told him in an email, but said the usual retirement dates given by Microsoft for earlier editions of Windows were now redundant.

How Windows 10’s support structure works

According to Kleynhans, the 10-year support clock starts ticking from the moment a customer first starts using Windows 10, or in other words, from the time he or she first powers up their device. So, if a customer was to buy a new device with Windows 10 in the year 2020, Microsoft would continue providing updates until 2030 – a full ten years.

The only caveat to this is that Microsoft won’t care much for the kind of hardware you’re using. Your device will need to be able to support the updates, and if it can’t it simply won’t get them. So if your PC only has a 16GB SSD and Microsoft decided to make Windows 10 too large to fit on this, you’ll be out of luck.

“They’ll support [Windows 10] until the hardware physically can’t handle it,” Kleynhans said.

Kleynhans added that business customers using Microsoft’s Long-term Servicing Branch (LTSB) for updates would continue to get the same level of support Microsoft has always offered – that’s five years of mainstream support and five years extended. Mainstream support refers to the kind of support for a software that spans a minimum of five years, should a new version of said software be released by the time. Extended support, meanwhile, refers to a minimum of five years where previous version of a software gets updates even after a newer version is released.

The Windows lifecycle fact sheet also revealed that Microsoft would end overall support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020, and Windows 8 on January 10, 2023. Windows 10 will be publicly launched for free on July 29.

Photo Credit: download.net.pl via Compfight cc