As Microsoft Forces Users to Ditch Windows 10, It Announces That It’s Also Turning Windows 11 into an AI Monstrosity

Futurism ^ | Oct 17, 2025 | Frank Landymore

[Openurmind]

Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10, all but forcing users to either upgrade or pay more money to keep getting essential security updates for the OS they already own. No matter that its replacement, Windows 11, can’t be run on nearly half a billion machines, meaning it’ll create mountains of e-waste as those old, perfectly usable PCs get thrown out for new ones.

If possible, things are getting even worse. This week, Microsoft is launching a suite of artificial intelligence features that basically turns existing Windows 11 systems into full-blown “AI PCs” which are controlled by Copilot, the company’s AI assistant. This isn’t us being uncharitable: it’s literally how a Microsoft exec is describing the update.

“We think we’re on the cusp of the next evolution, where AI happens not just in that chatbot and gets naturally integrated into the hundreds of millions of experiences that people use every day,” Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, told The Verge in a briefing. “The vision that we have is: let’s rewrite the entire operating system around AI, and build essentially what becomes truly the AI PC.”

[CaptainK]

What are the supposed dangers of staying on an outdated system? I’m on Windows 10 and don’t feel like getting a new computer.

[Blue Highway]

I've been on my laptop Huawei MATE D - AMD Ryzen 5 8mb RAM, stoc SSD drive and I've been online since 9am (so for 4 hours already) and when I hover over the battery this is what I see.

I know it's not exact or completely accurate but it's not far from what I end up getting before I put it back on the charger when it drops below 5%. Going by average, I'll get at least 10 hours easy.

This is in Windows 10 with anywhere from 5-10 tabs open in Vivaldi (at this moment I have 16 tabs open). If I try the same thing in Fedora 43 or Linux Mint XFCE I'm LUCKY to get 5 hours with similar usage. How is this possible? Less than half of the battery life with the 2 different versions of Linux I have used.

So much for the thought Linux is less resource heavy than WIN10.

[hecticskeptic]

I just signed up all four of our Win10 machines.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wish it was that simple... What you did was what I did for my home computers. What do I do about the business ones? According to this commercial applications can’t get the ESU...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/extended-security-updates

[MikelTackNailer]

About ten years ago for awhile Youtube was taking over and using your camera and microphone without permission. And that was just landing on their site. Not an account, not logged in nothing, just as guest user. They either do not do it anymore or they have figured out how to sneak it in without anyone knowing. Google is Government surveillance.

Dang. Had this computer for a full year now and totally forgot to tape over the camera.

No gold found but hope springs eternal.

It's hard to criticize the young for loving TikTok when YouTube is more-or-less the adult version; which may be spying on us like the Chinese have been spying on the kids.

This aggressive push by Microsoft to make everyone use Co-Pilot (which is apparently irreversible) further justifies my paranoia.

[Blue Highway]

Sorry about that, I guess figured you seem like the resident Linux user, so if anyone would know about what I am looking for odds are you’d be the best bet.

[Twotone]

But does that really apply when you’re doing nothing other than partitioning your own computer to allow for a secondary operating system, like this guy is doing? At least, that’s what I understood him to say. And the Microsoft software just comes in & obliterates it when an update is run. No one is modifying their software, they’re just trying to run something else concurrently.

[Openurmind]

As a techie I am about done completely with the “normal” internet. It is almost worthless anymore. All Browsers are spying on you even Brave, Search results are garbage, every site you land on is spying on you, Website host servers are spying, AI is raiding site databases and slowing down the bandwidth, Everyone is being forced onto CloudFlare which is a censorship tool and master switch for .gov, we are almost to the point where domain names will be yanked to shut off sites, so called “Secure” message apps are not really secure, Etc. It is done... All it is now all thumbs on digital micromanagement and enslavement.

I’m going underground where it is secure and there are none of these problems. A group can literally build their own secure underground network as big as they want very easily and there is nothing the powers that be can do about it. And no servers or server farms needed. And it is all free... It has become time...

[AF_Blue]

If you need a straight text / code editor, try Notepad++

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

[Openurmind]

It takes your one “physical” drive and makes it two completely separate “logical” drives. But as far as the machine sees it they are two different physical drives even though they are not.

There are a couple bios settings that sometimes need to be made so that Windows can no longer make changes to the bios. They would have to make changes to the bios in order to have any control at all over the separate Linux drive. But you can lock out their ability to do this.

There are two settings. “Secure/safe/quick Boot”, and “Windows Boot Manager”. These need to be turned off in the bios.

[Nervous Tick]

That applies to organizations that do volume licensing of Win10, I think. And/or are connected on a corporate “active directory” and all that stuff. So if that’s you, indeed you are correct, you can’t take advantage of ESU. Note I may not have the jargon correct, it’s been a couple decades since I was up to date on corporate Windows stuff.

If you just have a PC that is running off the shelf Win10 Pro that you happen to use “commercially” (like the laptop I use in my consulting, for example) you’re good to go.

[Openurmind]

“I guess figured you seem like the resident Linux user.”

Actually I don’t deserve that honor, just a novice, hobbyist, and Linux fan. I’m still learning daily myself. Shadow Ace and Pollard are the respected gurus here... I just help if and when I can. :)

[SkyDancer]

Well we started out on Vista then the other systems and finally on W7 which we like, it works for our purposes and W10 Pro is okay, just convoluted in trying to find system stuff like file lists but OTT it meets our needs. We have two desktops with W7, one laptop with W7 and two with W10.

[hecticskeptic]

Here’s what I’m wondering....

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/extended-security-updates?r=1

About 1/3 of the way down this page under “Windows 10 ESU prerequisites”, there is this line at the bottom....”If you’re an IT professional and need to enable ESU for your organisation, see Enable Extended Security Updates (ESU).” And if you click on that link, this is what opens up... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/enable-extended-security-updates

Does this not mean that I can simply purchase the ESUs for the Windows 10 (version 22H2) computers in my company? In the FAQ section, it says that the cost is $61/device and the cost doubles progressively for years 2 and 3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/extended-security-updates#frequently-asked-questions

Am I missing something here?

[Buttons12]

Notepad. I’m not THAT retro. :D

[minnesota_bound]

#58 Wordpad has not been updated since 2012.
Many free programs that could replace it that are better.
Try the free LibreOffice Writer

https://www.libreoffice.org
https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/screenshots/

https://books.libreoffice.org/en/WG72/WG7201-IntroducingWriter.html

You can save the doc using the ‘ODF text document’ extension.
Google: what is a odf text document

Non proprietary format. Open source.
You can also save as a Word doc too. Or Rich text or PDF.
You can add Wordpad back to Windows 11 too.
You have to do a google search. Basically just copy the program files over from say Windows 10..

[minnesota_bound]

Here is the complete help.
https://books.libreoffice.org/en/index.html
Click

[Buttons12]

I’ve been using Libre since forever, just don’t like it. Too many options and it takes longer to load. Just to get an rtf I can get in one second flat.
I got back wordpad but it took a while. Next time I buy a laptop I’ll just find a Windows 10.
Most of my activity on computer doesn’t even require a connection to internet. I’d rather go without internet than without wordpad.

[Still Thinking]

It’s like communism — it’ll work fine once no one has a choice!!

[Still Thinking]

You can actually still install Windows 10 LTSC IoT, free of a lot of the MicroCruft AND gets security updates till 2032. It’s basically Enterprise without the crap you don’t want or need and 7 more years of support.

[Still Thinking]

In addition to Open/Libre Office, I have the office suite from Softmaker in Germany. I prefer Write to their Textmaker, but I prefer their Planmaker to Calc, although I have them all installed. I’m using the paid version of Softmaker (like $50 perpetual), but only because I ran into some functions that they only had in the paid version of the spreadsheet (plus it’s good software and perpetual, so I don’t mind paying anyway), but I used the free version and it did everything I needed for years.