Malta’s Windows 10 Users Face €61 Annual Toll as Microsoft Pulls Plug on Updates

Microsoft’s decision to pull the plug on Windows 10 security updates in October 2025 has landed like a late-summer sirocco on the Maltese islands: hot, dusty, and impossible to ignore. From the family-run accounting office in Birkirkara to the gaming cafés of Paceville, an estimated 78 % of Malta’s 550 000 active PCs still run the decade-old operating system. When the Redmond giant flips the switch next year, those machines will become digital Fort St Elmo without sentries—impressive, but wide open to attack.

The timing feels almost cruel. Just as Malta’s schools prepare for the new scholastic year and hotels fine-tune bookings for the 2025 cruise surge, businesses are being told to budget for new hardware or pay Microsoft €61 per device for an extra 12 months of “Extended Security Updates”. For a country where 92 % of enterprises employ fewer than 10 people, that’s not pocket change; it’s a new kitchen or a term of school fees.

“Microsoft is essentially charging us a Covid-style surcharge,” grumbles Rebecca Zahra, who manages a 20-seat language school in Sliema. “We refreshed laptops in 2019 with Windows 10 because it was rock-solid. Now we either fork out €1 220 annually just for patches, or buy new machines that will handle Windows 11—except the chips in our current fleet aren’t on the approved list.”

The problem is more than financial; it’s cultural. Maltese households traditionally hand down computers the way they pass on heirloom furniture. A 2022 National Statistics Office survey found that 64 % of secondary students do homework on second-hand laptops donated by older siblings or cousins. Windows 11’s TPM 2.0 chip requirement suddenly renders that circular economy obsolete, threatening to swell Malta’s already-critical e-waste figures. Last year, the islands generated 13 kg of digital junk per capita—double the EU average.

Gaming communities are feeling the heat too. “Counter-Strike tournaments at our LAN hub rely on silky-smooth Windows 10 drivers,” says Chris “Zazu” Camilleri, owner of the legendary PlayMore café in Valletta. “If we upgrade to Windows 11, older graphics cards stutter. If we stay put, we’re hacker bait. Either way, the kids lose.”

Even Gozo’s agritourism farms, which use Windows 10 tablets to monitor irrigation sensors, worry about ransomware hitting during the critical grape-harvest window. “One crypto-lock attack and we can’t water the vines for three days,” warns Victor Pace, who supplies boutique wineries in Xewkija. “In July heat, that’s a whole vintage gone.”

Microsoft Malta’s local PR agency insists the transition is “an opportunity to modernise”. Yet consumers note that the cheapest Windows 11-ready laptop on the market retails at €499—half the monthly minimum wage. Second-hand importers at the Malta Computer Society say stocks of compliant models dried up weeks after Microsoft’s announcement, pushing prices up 30 %.

Opposition MP and IT spokesperson David Agius has tabled a parliamentary question asking whether government will negotiate a bulk ESU licence for state schools and health clinics. Meanwhile, Digital Economy Minister Clayton Bartolo floated a “PC-as-a-Service” pilot, leasing new devices to small businesses in exchange for old kit that can be securely refurbished or recycled.

Civil society is stepping in where the market stalls. Hackerspace Malta will host a weekend “Linux Fest” in September, showing residents how to breathe new life into abandoned hardware with free, open-source systems. “We’re not anti-Microsoft,” insists organiser Sarah Pace. “We’re pro-choice. If the tech giant won’t support its product, the community will.”

For now, Maltese users face an unpalatable trilemma: pay the ransom, buy new machines, or jump ship to an unfamiliar OS. In a nation famed for squeezing 7 000 years of history onto 316 km², the hope is that ingenuity—not inertia—will decide which path the islands take. Otherwise, the shimmering blue of our Grand Harbour could soon be mirrored by the blank screens of a million silent PCs.