Page 11 - Newsletter_February_2026

and face the experience head-on.
After booking through the app, the car arrived displaying her initials on the roof. The doors opened auto-
matically, she fastened her seatbelt, and off it went. With no driver present, it felt strange watching the
steering wheel move on its own.
She was particularly interested in how the car handled cyclists and scooters. Would it leave enough space?
Would it be cautious enough? To her surprise, she quickly became comfortable with the experience and
found the driving smooth and reassuring.
The only hiccup came at the end of the journey. When the car struggled to find a safe place to park, it kept
circling the area. Eventually, she pressed a button to ask it to pull over — which it did, although the park-
ing job wasn’t exactly perfect!
Still, she pointed out that in the world of self-driving technology, a year is a long time. It’s very likely that
any issues like this have already been improved.

Exciting… and a Bit Scary

Driverless taxis in London now seem much closer than many people expected. For some, this is an excit-
ing glimpse of the future. For others, it’s slightly unsettling — especially when thinking about the impact
on traditional black cab drivers, who already face tough competition.
Whether we’re ready or not, it looks like autonomous taxis are on their way. As always, time will tell how
well they fit into everyday life on our roads.

Derek Kerr

Windows 10 shows signs of life despite Microsoft ending support

The latest figures paint an intriguing picture of PC use at the end of 2025.

Windows 10 and Windows 11 are dovetailing when it comes to global use stats.

Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 in October 2025, bringing a decade of the operating
system to a close. Although PCs with the software installed will continue to function, without the latest
security patches, users will be left more vulnerable to hacks and cyber threats than if they upgrade to Win-
dows 11.

Windows 11 was released in 2021 and Microsoft offers it as a free upgrade to anyone with a Windows 10
PC. But, as noted by Window Central, a strange thing has happened since Windows 10 was retired in Oc-
tober: global use of Windows 11 is in decline, while use of Windows 10 is on the rise.

That’s according to the newest numbers from Statcounter, which show Windows 11 had a 55.18 percent
share of the worldwide Windows market in April, the highest it has ever been. However, this figure fell to
53.7 percent in November 2025, and then again to 50.73 percent in December.

At the same time, Windows 10 dipped to 41.71 percent in October, before rising to 42.7 percent in No-
vember and then 44.68 percent in December.

Given Windows 10 has been given its full end of life status and Windows 11 is being offered as a free up-
grade, you would have thought the numbers would have gone in opposite directions since October, but that
doesn’t appear to be the case.

It’s possible people still on Windows 10 have opted to join Microsoft’s Extended Security Update (ESU)
programme that offers another year of security updates until 2026.

This is all to say, consumers appear to be somewhat disheartened by Microsoft’s push to Windows 11 at
all costs, especially if those customers are still using Windows 10 computers and resent being told to up-
grade - because, if your machine can’t handle Windows 11’s system requirements, you might be faced
with having to buy a whole new PC just to have up to date software.

Whatever the reasons people are leaving Windows 11 and continuing to use Windows 10, it will be inter-
esting to see where the market share between the two operating systems sits by the end of 2026.