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Windows 10 support ending in October 2025

October 14th 2025 is the official date that Microsoft will stop supporting or providing free updates to Windows 10 and are recommending that users upgrade to Windows 11.

However Windows 11 requires the existence of something called a TPM 2.0 module on your PC and without it, Windows 11 won’t install or run (not without some hacking about).

What is a TPM 2.0?

TPM 2.0, or Trusted Platform Module version 2.0, is a hardware-based security feature that provides a range of cryptographic functions and security services. It’s designed to enhance the security of devices by offering secure generation and storage of cryptographic keys, ensuring device integrity, and supporting secure boot processes.

You can buy TPM modules that will plug into specific TPM headers on your computers motherboard (if it has one) but if your PC is older that 5 years you may be out of luck and may need to shell out on a new computer costing many £100s, not to mention the process of migrating everything over.

Are there alternatives?

Thankfully yes. There are third party tools that aim to remove the TPM 2.0 (and other limitations) that Windows 11 imposes. However, these are unofficial and you may find that when your PC received a Windows 11 update, that it may break the hack, so not an ideal solution.

If you want to keep your perfectly serviceable hardware going for years to come but you want to retain some level of security online, then you may wish to consider Linux, a freely available alternative to Microsoft Windows and one that provides many of the same sorts of tools that you’re likely to be using such as an Email client, a web browser, Word and Excel alternatives, even a Photoshop alternative called GIMP!

Linux tends to demand less from your PC meaning that it may give your ageing hardware a new lease of life, but be aware that there is a learning curve associated with Linux as it’s not Windows. Having said that, you can tailor the Linux desktop to look and work very much like Windows.

For many of my customers, they typically need email, web browsing, Excel and Word type tools and I feel that Linux fill this gap admirably. I’ve been daily driving a Linux distribution called POP!_OS for over 4 years now and can confidently say that for these tasks, it performs incredibly well.

telegraph pole
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Is Trooli full fibre broadband really here and is there an alternative?

I’m a self confessed geek and I’ve been religiously checking on the trooli.com website for a while, hoping that my address will magically appear and I can order what is now potentially the fastest broadband product so far at 2Gb/2Gb. That’s to say 2 Gigabits up and down!

Sadly my property doesn’t seem to be on their list. despite my immediate neighbours being on there and us both currently using the same pole for our telephone services. Perhaps because I’m at the end of the road? I’ve tried to reach out to Trooli to get a formal reason as to why but answers seem unforthcoming so far.

It seems that quite a few properties down our street have whats called a JUP or “Joint User Pole” and whilst Trooli are allowed to use them, they have to apply for usage. The process seems a little confusing as Trooli are suggesting that there may be an additional cost if your property uses a JUP as Trooli have to carry out an assessment and then potentially pass on some/all of the licence fees associated with that JUP. It’s unclear at this point as to what these costs will be but they do say that they will let you know before you proceed with your order.

One thing that’s not clear is whether you’re footing much/all of the assessment/licence fee for the JUP which in turn then allows Trooli to sell services to other users of that pole without charging them a fee. I guess that the price you pay for wanting something sooner.

Wessex Internet

At present there’s not much competition for full fibre, but Wessex Internet have been making progress coming down the Everton Road through Hordle to Sky End Lane.

I bumped into an engineer the other day and asked if he had any information on whether Wessex Internet were coming to Everton. His reply was probably not this year but they would likely be starting in Milford and moving north anyway, not south from Hordle.

On paper Troolis product is cheaper and faster with their fastest 2000Mb/2000Mb residential service costing a penny under £50.00 per month, whereas Wessex Internet are quite a bit more expensive at £79 per month for a 900Mb/450Mb service. So it seems that at present, Trooli are the go to choice in terms of speed and price.

This may be because Trooli may be hanging their cables from existing poles for much of their installation whereas Wessex may be digging, which I suspect is a much more costly option and that cost is passed on to the customer.

BT/Openreach

So where is Openreach? As you may know, BT was broken up into a two parts, BT and Openreach to try to release their monopoly on the communications infrastructure and provide more competition. When you buy a broadband service, you don’t buy from Openreach, but it is they that provide and maintain a high percentage of the national infrastructure. If you visit this page you’ll be able to see what their plans are for the future and whether your area is planned for a full fibre upgrade.

Many companies use the Openreach network to sell their own products on, so when this becomes available, you may quickly find many more companies are able to provide Ultrafast broadband in your area too.

If anyone from either company wishes to reach out and let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

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How to tell if an email is spam?

It’s an inevitable fact of life that spam exists and that it can sometimes become a major annoyance and sometimes really embarrassing too. There are so many email schemes going on right now and I wanted to write an article covering some of the ways to identify if the email is genuine or not.

Many spam emails have something in common; they want you to carry out an action, whether that be to click on a link, to open an attachment, to view an image, to call a number or perhaps to send a payment via Bitcoin.

If you’re in any doubt as to where the email has come from DO NOT display any embedded images, open any attachments, click on any embedded links, ring any numbers or send any online payments.

If you receive spam from what seems to be a genuine company such as Vodafone or perhaps Plus.net or BT.com, the first thing to consider is do you have an account with them already? If the answer is “yes” then we can move on to the next step. If the answer is “no” then its likely that you can ignore the message and delete it if its not useful to you.

Look at the FROM address and see if it looks familiar or that the bit after the @ sign is genuine. So for example, you might get an email from sales@vodafone.co.uk. If your Vodafone email comes from anyone other than a Vodafone address, then its likely going to be some kind of spam.  I say likely as some legitimate companies will use a third party to deliver their marketing email. If in doubt, delete it.

If the FROM address looks correct then look at the copy of the email and see if there are any links present. If there are, don’t click on them, but if you hover your mouse cursor over the link, in many email programs it will show you the real address that you’ll be visiting and if this looks dodgy, don’t click on it! On a mobile device its a little different as you cannot hover your mouse, but I’ve founds that if you press and hold on a link on an Android or iOS device, it will give you options such as how you wish to open the link. Its at this stage that you can look at the link before really “clicking” on it to determine if it looks legitimate or not. If it looks dodgy, close the window and delete the email.

Are there any obvious grammatical or spelling errors? If there are then this should be ringing alarm bells. Any legitimate company should be spell and grammar checking their emails before they are sent out to 100,000s of people.

Heres a good example. I recently received an email allegedly from Gov.uk regarding an unsuccessful tax submission. The email below itself looks quite professional, but the FROM address (marked with a red box) is not an address I’d expect this email to come from so my spidey sense is tingling. On closer inspection, when I hover (not click) on the blue text link, the address (marked in a green box at the bottom) is certainly not an address I’d expect a valid gov.uk email to use.

The more astute among you will also notice some other interesting things in the image, namely that theres a bar running along the top (marked with a yellow box) mentioning “Paris”. This is displayed as I have a plugin which aims to tell me whereabouts an email has come from based on some invisible data within the email. Whilst this is not 100% accurate all the time, it does help with flagging emails that may not be genuine. This plugin is called “MailHops” for Mozilla Thunderbird, a really good email program from the same people who make the Firefox browser.

So adding all the evidence up, its incredibly likely that even if I would expect to get an email from gov.uk regarding the submission of taxes, this specific email is not genuine and it can been sent to the bin.