Windows 10 stopped being supported on 14 October 2025. That is not a warning about something coming — it happened almost a year ago. Machines still running it have been going without security patches ever since, unless someone paid to keep them coming.
If that is your practice, there is a decision landing in about eight weeks, and the cost of getting it wrong roughly doubles.
What actually stopped
From 14 October 2025, Microsoft stopped providing three things for Windows 10: technical support, feature updates, and — the one that matters — quality updates, which includes security fixes.
The machines did not stop working. That is the whole problem. A Windows 10 PC today boots, opens your practice management software, prints, scans and claims exactly as it did two years ago. Nothing on the screen tells the person using it that the last security patch it will ever receive has already been installed. It simply accumulates unpatched holes, quietly, while looking completely normal.
The paid extension, and the trap inside it
Microsoft sells a way out called Extended Security Updates, or ESU. For businesses it is priced per device and it is deliberately unpleasant:
- Year one: US$61 per device. That period began in November 2025.
- The price doubles every year, to a maximum of three years. Year two is US$122 per device. Year three is US$244.
- It is cumulative. If you skip year one and try to buy in year two, you pay for year one as well. There is no way to join late and pay only for the time you want.
- You cannot buy part of a year. No six-month option.
- Technical support is not included. ESU delivers patches. That is all it is.
- The device must be running Windows 10 version 22H2 to be eligible at all.
Year two begins in November 2026. So for a practice with ten Windows 10 machines, the question arriving now is whether to spend somewhere around US$1,220 for another year of security patches on hardware that is already at least a year past its supported life — and then face US$2,440 the year after that.
Put plainly: ESU is a bridge, not a destination. Microsoft priced it to be uncomfortable on purpose, and the discomfort is the point.
The part specific to practices
Two things make this sharper in a clinical setting than in an ordinary office.
Your software vendor has their own supported-platform list. ESU keeps Microsoft patching Windows. It does not oblige Dental4Windows, Exact, Oasis, Praktika or your imaging vendor to keep supporting their product on it. If a vendor states they no longer support Windows 10, paying Microsoft for ESU does not help you when their support desk declines the ticket. Worth asking your vendor directly, in writing, before you budget for anything.
Patient data raises the stakes. Under the Australian Privacy Principles you are required to take reasonable steps to protect personal information. Running a machine that holds patient records on an operating system receiving no security updates, a year after the vendor stopped, is a position that is very hard to argue is reasonable — to a patient, to an insurer, or to anyone asking questions after an incident. Worth checking your cyber insurance policy for wording about unsupported software, too.
What we would actually do
Not "replace everything". Most practices have a mix, and the answer differs machine by machine.
1. Find out what you actually have. Not a guess — a list. Every PC, which Windows version, whether it is on 22H2, and whether it will take Windows 11. Most machines from roughly 2019 onward will. The blockers are usually TPM 2.0 and the processor generation, and both are checkable in about a minute per device.
2. Upgrade everything that is eligible. If a machine meets the Windows 11 requirements, upgrading it is free and it ends the problem for that device. A lot of practices have more eligible machines than they assume.
3. Be honest about the ones that are not. A five-year-old workstation that cannot take Windows 11 does not automatically need replacing this month, but it does need a date. Knowing you will replace three PCs in March is a budget line. Discovering it during an outage is not.
4. Use ESU narrowly, if at all. There is one genuinely good reason to buy it: a specific machine you cannot move yet — the PC bolted to an imaging sensor whose driver has no Windows 11 version, or a workstation running something a vendor has not certified. Buying ESU for that one device while you sort out a replacement is sensible. Buying it across the practice because it is easier than making decisions is how you end up paying US$244 a device in 2027 with the same problem still in front of you.
5. Separate the ones holding patient data. If budget is tight, the machines that touch the practice management database and imaging come first. A reception PC used for email and a browser is a lower risk than the workstation with the clinical record open on it all day. Practices carry this obligation regardless of size, which is covered in more detail on the dental IT support page.
What you do not need to be sold
You do not need every machine replaced at once. You do not need a support contract to find out where you stand. And you do not need to buy hardware from whoever tells you about this — we do not take commissions on equipment, which is exactly why we are comfortable telling you that several of your PCs are probably fine.
If you would like the list in step one done properly, that is what the free IT health check is: an audit of what you are running, which machines can move to Windows 11, which cannot, and roughly what each one costs to deal with. Written in plain English, no obligation, and it will tell you the items you do not need us for.
If something is already broken rather than merely out of date, ring 03 7057 1878 — evenings until 9pm, Saturdays, and a Sunday emergency line from 9am to 5pm. That is the part most providers do not cover.
Prices quoted are Microsoft's published US dollar figures per device for commercial customers; what you actually pay depends on your licensing arrangement and the exchange rate. Confirm current pricing before budgeting.