> There are plenty of people still using windows 10 with updates turned off or wedged for whatever reason.
It'd be "the pool of people who installed Windows 10 immediately in the launch year but somehow accidentally blocked their browser from updating in the 10 years since, weren't able to fix the issue as the web slowly stopped working, and are stuck using that computer anyways" not "the pool of people still on Windows 10".
The latter won't have many non-intentionally pushed into "10 year old browser status" until 2038 at the earliest.
I have a 10 year old laptop with 32GB of RAM, GTX 970 6GB and an SSD. For many things it is better than any 16GB work issued laptop (that often come with integrated cards - so you wont be able to run any AI model on them). Although the old ssd is starting to show its age (perhaps a full system reinstall would solve this, other option is to get a new one).
The old laptop does not have UEFI so it could not get the (free for some time) Windows 10 to 11 upgrade.
I am smart enough to install Firefox on it and update it, but the official Windows 10 updates will stop coming soon.
I was effectively kicked out by Microsoft because my device is "old". Even if it is beefy enough to browse the internet and watch youtube.
Note that I bought a new beefy laptop now that I hope to use for the next 5+ years (hopefully more), but who knows if they wont come out with some new idea, like UEFI 2.0 for Windows 12 - that again will mean we need to buy new hardware and new windows.
On an unrelated note I want to turn the old laptop to a linux machine - for fun and learning, but dont have the time for that.
Last October, unless you are on an LTS type version - in which case somewhere between 2028-2032 (depending on the exact version). Edge will still update until at least 2028 even though the OS stopped receiving updates... though I'm not sure I would wish either of those usage scenarios on someone :).
> The old laptop does not have UEFI so it could not get the (free for some time) Windows 10 to 11 upgrade.
The free registration, they never actually axed the program at the end date https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/windows10spa.... Just make sure you use the same edition (e.g. Pro -> Pro). You also don't have to do an in place upgrade to do it. In your specific scenario, you would have to bypass the install requirements in the installer to get around the lack of UEFI though.
Hope that helps, Windows 11 is definitely a bit of an annoying step (even once it's installed).
> There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers.
How many people have 10 year old phones? I've got an 8 year old iPhone XR which I keep around as a backup/travel device because it's not worth selling, and the battery is… not happy even in airplane mode.
For me to have a 10 year old mobile browser, I'd have to have kept the iPhone SE 1 (or was it a 5c?) that I bought second hand in 2018, and not upgraded it since I bought it. I got rid of it because the battery wouldn't hold a charge for 10 minutes.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
or windows 8[.1], or windows 7, or windows xp... there's a lot of old hardware out there, not every is rich/tech savvy (see also: old people) enough to purchase a new device even 10 years later
While I'm of course an edge case, the fact that Google, Apple and Samsung all provide >5 years OS support for devices now (and battery replacement services) suggests that many people hang onto their old phones for a long time.
That said, I'm not using 7 year old software on my phone. That would be insane. And my browser (fennec) was updated just a few days ago.
For $50 you can buy a whole new phone (refurb that is 4 yrs old from some other country)