As of October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer be providing software or security updates for Windows 10 computers. While the software updates may be something you can live without, a lack of security updates poses a significant risk to any business still running devices on Windows 10. For that reason alone, you have three options after October 2025:
- Get rid of the device
- Upgrade to Windows 11
- Install ChromeOS Flex for free and turn those devices into Chromebooks
Upgrading an older computer to Windows 11 is often not practical, since the device likely has limited life remaining and may not meet the system requirements. Disposing of it might seem like the next step, but that can be unnecessarily wasteful, especially with hundreds of millions of devices due to lose this support in 2025.
Transforming the device into a Chromebook with ChromeOS Flex can significantly extend its life and usefulness. Your users can still continue to work in the Microsoft ecosystem by using cloud-based apps, which they were probably using anyway.
ChromeOS eats up much less RAM and other computing resources than a Windows OS, making your older computer much faster than it was before. Chrome always updates in the background, so your security is not compromised, and your users don’t have to wait for an update to install.
Getting started with ChromeOS Flex
All you need is a USB drive and the ability to install something on a computer. Once you’ve copied ChromeOS Flex to your USB drive, it will automatically walk you through the process.
As a bonus, you can do it on any Macs you have laying around too. Here’s how to do it:
- Create a bootable ChromeOS Flex USB Drive
- Use the USB to replace the operating system on your old devices
You can also use network deployment to install ChromeOS Flex, but to do that you’ll need to upgrade to Chrome Enterprise Upgrade. If you’re a smaller shop with just a few devices, you can just use the USB method and not pay a cent - much cheaper than upgrading to Windows 11.
And there’s no catch - Google is just handing this out, perhaps in the hopes that you’ll switch to Google Workspace one day, but no guardrails are in place for you to continue using all of the Microsoft apps that you’re using right now.
What can I do with my “new” Chromebook?
You’ll be able to do everything you did before, just not with native apps. Everything on a Chromebook is cloud-based, meaning that you just use a browser to access any of the software you were using before.
If you would rather use them for something else, here are some ideas:
Dedicated meeting computers
If your computer has a decent camera, you can repurpose it as a dedicated meeting computer. You can use any meeting app you have, from Teams to Meet to Zoom. You can also set up any web-based apps you’re using for transcription so that everything only happens on that device.
Offer to employees for personal use
Rather than throwing your devices away, you can offer them to employees for their kids, themselves, or family members with the above instructions for how to turn them into Chromebooks.
Upgrading to Chrome Enterprise
Transforming all of your old Windows PCs into Chromebooks is free, but device management of them is not. If you have multiple devices in different locations (for example, with remote workers) or a significant number of devices, you are going to need ChromeOS device management. Luckily, we’re here to help you out with that. As a Google Premier Partner, we’ve helped to deploy Chrome in enterprise settings for clients in multiple industries. The best part - it’s still cheaper than upgrading all of these devices to Windows 11.
Get in touch with us to discuss how we can help before that October deadline hits!
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