Most of my actual writing nowadays is done in Google Docs on a Chromebook. But most of my graphic design and layout over the past several years has been done on a robust Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 10. As you probably know, Windows 10 support is ending in a few days, but my workhorse of a ThinkPad isn’t upgradeable to Windows 11.
Recently Microsoft announced an option for Windows security updates for another year, for $30 + tax. I planned to do just that.
But today I discovered there’s a way to do it for free. There are a couple of prerequisites, which happily already applied to my use of the OS. So, voila, that old ThinkPad is good for another year.
The process is pretty simple, and there are plenty of YouTube videos showing how to do it. Here’s one:
This gives me more time to migrate over to the newish Windows 11 laptop I’m typing on at the moment. And to experiment with running the Affinity Publishing Suite on Linux Mint or some other Linux flavor. (The Steam Deck’s underlying Linux desktop mode made me a convert.)