Officially, it’s been “out of service” since October 14. And indeed, Windows 10 market share has been falling for some time now, with 11 ascendant. But, in unwinding Windows 10’s long goodbye from the desktop OS scene, there’s no sign yet of a spiraling vortex as the old OS goes down the drain. Remember, too, that older OSes — inlcuding 7,  XP and 8.x versions all show up in a range from just under 3% (7) to under 0.3% (XP, 8, and 8.1). Apparently old OSes never fade away completely…

Unwinding Windows 10’s Long Goodbye via 7

As I think about what’s going on here, I can’t help but use Windows 7 as a lens through which to view Windows 10’s upcoming decline. This actually shows itself quite nicely in a Copilot-generated desktop share graph (source: Wikipedia’s summary of StatCounter data 2015-2025).

2015, of course, was the year in which Windows 10 made its debut. It was also the same year in which Windows 7 transitioned from “mainstream support” to “extended support.” That’s what Windows 10 did this year, in slightly different terms.

Notice the shape of the curve imposes modest steps until the midpoint. It shows more serious declines since then. My gut feel is that Windows 10 will experience a similar fall-off. That said, I also believe the curve will drop more precipitously. That’s because MS has long sworn to limit extended support for 10 to 3 years, whereas it didn’t end ESU for 7 until the 5-year mark (2020) came along.

That would put the half-way mark three rather than 5 years out, with faster dropoffs after that. That said, with RAM and GPU prices currently on a steep rise, the impetus to buy new hardware to meet Windows 11 requirements may have hit a steep wall. Here in Windows-World the path from A to B (or 2025 to the New Year and beyond) isn’t always straight or simple. Let’s see what happens, shall we?