What to Do Before Microsoft Cuts Off Support for Windows 10 Next Week

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Attention, PC users: The end of Windows 10 support is just one week away. Microsoft is cutting off most support for the older operating system on Oct. 14, 2025, pushing users toward Windows 11. That said, the company is giving users who can't (or don't want to) let go of Windows 10 more options to receive security updates for an additional year.

One of the risks of not upgrading to Windows 11 by the deadline is that your device won't be protected against viruses and hackers—unless you take advantage of one of the free or paid options to enroll in Extended Security Updates (ESU). (Note that Microsoft has also extended support for Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 through Oct. 10, 2028.)

How to get Windows 10 extended security updates

Windows 10 users were already able to pay $30 for a year ESU coverage, which you can still do, but Microsoft is offering two additional options to protect your device at no cost. You can either opt into Windows Backup to sync your settings to the cloud or redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, which are accrued when you purchase or otherwise engage with Microsoft services, including Bing. Note that both of these "free" alternatives require you to have (or sign up for) a Microsoft account.

If you're still on Windows 10, you should have received a push notification about the program. If not, or if you missed it, you can find the enrollment wizard in your Settings app. Update your PC to the latest version if you haven't already, then head back to Settings > Windows Update to look for the "Windows 10 support ends in October 2025" and "Enroll in Extended Security Updates to help keep your device secure." There, you can choose any of the three enrollment options to ensure your PC receives any future critical security updates.

Microsoft does not consider this a long-term solution, however. The extended coverage starts Oct. 15, and will last until Oct. 13, 2026, with critical security updates delivered on a monthly basis. Note that ESU does not include new features, non-security updates, design change requests, or tech support.

You Can Get Both Windows 11 Pro and Microsoft Office Pro for Just $45 Right Now

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This StackSocial bundle pairs Microsoft Office Professional 2021 with Windows 11 Pro on sale for just $44.97 right now (down from nearly $419). It’s the kind of deal that makes sense if you’re setting up a new PC or finally updating an old one. The Office license is for life—no subscription, no annual fees, and it covers all the essentials, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Access, and the free version of Teams. Everything installs locally on one Windows PC, so there’s no hopping between browser tabs or worrying about renewing in 12 months.

The Windows 11 Pro license, also included, is the full upgrade. It features advanced tools such as BitLocker encryption, Hyper-V virtualization, and Windows Sandbox, making it ideal for professionals handling professional-level tasks or sensitive data. If you’re switching from Windows 10 Home, you’ll notice productivity bumps too: snap layouts, tabbed File Explorer, and Copilot baked into the OS. That last one is Microsoft’s AI helper that lives on your taskbar. You can press the Windows key + C to launch it and ask it to summarize web pages, open apps, or adjust settings—all with plain English.

Note that you’ll need at least 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage to run it, as well as TPM 2.0 and UEFI support; therefore, older PCs may be incompatible. You can only use Office on one PC, and the license is tied to that device, not your Microsoft account, so it doesn’t travel with you if you upgrade to a new computer later. The Windows 11 Pro key gives you a bit more flexibility (it can be activated on up to two devices). And while it’s not compatible with virtual machines or Parallels, the deal still offers solid value for most everyday or professional users looking to avoid recurring costs. Just be sure to activate it within 30 days of purchase.

Why You Should Revise Your Notes Before You Leave Class

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Taking notes, whether in class or in meetings, is a standard part of learning. Studies have suggested writing by hand helps you retain information better than using a computer, which is why you should only bring a notebook and pen with you to class in addition to (or instead of) your laptop.

But there’s more to effective note-taking than jotting down a bunch of bullet points. To be useful, your notes should be organized into topics and subtopics, with a sensible flow that you’ll be able to follow later. That’s why you should revise your notes immediately after class—even before you leave your seat, if you can.

What to do with notes after class

When you’re taking notes—whether typed or hand-written—you have to be picky about what you do and don’t write down, given how much time it takes to do so before the lecturer moves on to another point you don’t want to miss. This is great for helping you stay engaged with the class and think critically about what is and isn’t important, but leaves the potential for gaps in your notes that you won’t realize are there until later, once you’re reading them over. So it’s best to read them over right away, and revise them as necessary.

Marty Lobdell, a former professor emeritus at Pierce College who spent 40 years teaching psychology and study skills, recommends immediate note revision and expansion in his “Study Less, Study Smart” video. While the lecture is fresh in your mind, he advises, you should use your memory of it, plus your texts and other course materials, to expand on the notes you took down.

Rewrite them completely, adding key details to what you already deemed was important in class, including anything relevant in the supplemental materials. Doing so will not only make your notes easier to study later, but will help you retain the information, since rewriting them will be your first chance to review what you’ve learned.

How to maximize your post-class notes

While taking notes in class, it’s best to be brief and concise, especially since you know you’ll be expanding them later. You can use abbreviations and codes to write faster, as long as you’re sure you’ll be able to decode and expand upon them later. After class, review and edit your notes, compare them to your textbook or course materials, and, if possible, another student’s notes, so you’re sure you’re not missing anything.

While writing initially and when revising, choose the most effective note-taking method for your personal study style. The outlining method works best for recopying and involves putting general information on the left side of your paper and indenting more specific groups of facts underneath. For your in-class note-taking, consider the Cornell method, which requires you to write down quick bits of information on the left side of your paper, then fill in more specifics on the right when you have time later.

Whichever method you choose, don’t leave class until your note expansion is complete (or, if that’s not realistic, take care of it as soon as possible after class). Review your notes between and 10 minutes before the next class so everything is fresh in your mind before you move on.

Ideas for better notes and revision

Taking notes using an established method, like Cornell, is your best bet, since it gives you a little structure while you go. The way you revise them is important, too. I recommend reformatting them into a mind map. This is a visual representation of how concepts work together. Reminiscent of a flowchart, it uses bubbles, colors, and arrows to denote related topics and subtopics. Here, you can call on tech for backup. I like the Xmind app for creating simple, fast mind maps.

The benefits of revising this way are numerous. First, you force yourself not just to focus on topics and concepts, but on how they all fit together, which helps entrench them in your mind and enhance your understanding overall. Second, adding in some color or intrigue helps with retention, too. Third, forcing yourself to reformat the notes in a completely different way than you took them makes you think differently about them and focus on getting everything right.

These Are the Best Flashcard Apps for Studying

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Making your own flashcards can be tedious, but they’re such a great study tool that it would be a shame to let that stop you from using them. Although there are major retention benefits to writing information down by hand, busy learners don’t always have time—so here are some solid online options for making and using flashcards.

The benefits of flashcards for studying

First, it's important to understand why you want to use flashcards to study, let alone why some apps and services are better suited to this task than others. Repeatedly quizzing yourself can entrench the content of the flashcards into your brain, since you have to use the process of active recall to retrieve the information from your short- or long-term memory when you see a prompt. You can mix up your active recall strategies by blurting, which means saying or writing down everything you can remember from your materials before checking your notes, or using the Feynman technique, which involves "teaching" the content to someone else—even if it's just ChatGPT. But for now, let's focus on flashcards.

The best way to make your material stick in your brain is to use the Leitner method, a kind of spaced repetition, and flashcards are what make that possible. With this technique, you sort your flashcards into about five piles (though you can have more or less depending on how much time stands between you and your test) as you review them, moving them up a pile or down a pile depending on if you get an answer right or wrong. Over time, you'll be able to review the cards in the higher-up piles less frequently, since you grasp their contents, and you'll review cards in the lower-down piles more often, since you're struggling with them.

Not only will you waste less time drilling material you know, you'll force your brain to etch it into your long-term memory so you can retrieve it on the rare instances you do go over those cards. A lot of the apps below actually use the Leitner method or a version of spaced repetition to automatically show you cards you're struggling with more often, which is what makes them so useful. That said, you still need to study those less-frequent cards; that's a process called overlearning and it will help you retain the information for a lot longer.

The apps below were chosen for a few reasons. First, I picked ones that make flashcard generation easy. Second, I selected ones that, to some extent or another, rely on the Leitner method and give you the option to indicate whether you got a card right or wrong.

The best flashcard apps

There are some great, easy-to-use sites that allow you to create flashcard decks online, then use those virtual decks to study.

For finding pre-made flashcards: Brainscape

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

In my full review of Brainscape, I gave it five stars. I truly like this one. I'm actually using it actively right now to study for a certification exam I have coming up.

Brainscape gives you the option to make your own flashcards, but also to search for decks made by other learners—and even the option to access decks that have been approved by credentialing bodies for things like standardized tests, entry exams, and certification tests. It's ideal for everyone from SAT preppers to lifelong learners like me and the variety of material on there is endless. I've even used it to study random things just because I have an interest in learning something new. Best of all, I've never had to create a deck. Whatever I want is already in there.

The free-account option allows you to use text, while the paid version lets you add images and sounds, do more advanced editing, study an unlimited amount, import materials, copy other users’ flashcards into your files, and see learning stats. One month of Brainscape is $19.99, six months cost $59.94, a year is $95.88, and a lifetime membership is $199.99. For what it's worth, I've been using the free version for months and am doing just fine.

Using your phone? Here’s the iOS version and the Android version.

For simplicity: Cram

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

Sometimes, all you need or want is the simplest flashcard deck, with cards that have a front and back and can be used for quizzing. Cram is so easy to use and it works great in its free version (although $29.99 per month gets you access to a few extra features, like customization of your card formatting).

Read my full review here, but the basics are these: You get plain, white cards that the site displays either as traditional flashcards, a matching game with drop-down menus, or classic computer games (a jewel-matching game and a space shooting game) that pull your flashcard information into them. Besides the flashy games, there are no unnecessary frills here. Enter the information onto the cards and study. It’s that easy.

Download the apps: iOS is here and Android is here.

To add pictures: Quizlet

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

There are a number of flashcard generators that let you use pictures, but the pricing on many of them is weirdly opaque. Quizlet, a popular studying platform you're probably already familiar with if you've ever taken an online class and tried to Google your homework questions, allows you to create flashcards (with pictures!), browse other people’s flashcards, and take practice quizzes—and the pricing for getting rid of ads and studying an unlimited amount is straightforward: You pay $35.99 per year or $7.99 per month. You can import existing data, from Word or Excel, too, to create the flashcards even faster. In my review of this one, I did give it five stars because you can also use your account to access practice quizzes and games, plus it's been around for so long it's basically the gold standard for students. Like others on this list, it functions fine in the free version, which is why it made my list of best free studying apps, too.

Download for your iPhone here and your Android here.

For quick flashcard generation: Flashcard lab

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

If you want to make fast flashcards and you use Google's free suite of productivity apps (namely Google Sheets), you should use Flashcard Lab. As I explain in my full review, it's not flashy. All it is, at its core, is a simple way to quickly turn content from Google Sheets into flashcards. Column A is the front of the card, Column B produces the back, and that's about it—but it's great if all you need is some fast cards. If you're truly in a rush, you can upload class materials to ChatGPT and ask the AI to create a downloadable .xls file with questions and answers, then open it in Sheets and go from there. Truly, using this one couldn't be easier or less labor intensive.

Available on iOS and Android, as well as through a Chrome extension, you can use it for free to study 600 GRE vocab words, review or print up to 20 flashcards per deck, add up to five images per deck, and manually add cards to a "forgotten" set for re-review. A one-time payment of $10.99 bumps you up to the "Elite" tier, which gives you access to some extra features, like the ability to toggle on spaced repetition or randomized review.

For learning a foreign language: DuoCards

Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

There are two apps I recommend for learning a foreign language and they are Repeet and DuoCards. In a head-to-head comparison, I did pick DuoCards because its extra features edged out Repeet ever so slightly, but the long and short of it is that both of them have automatic translation features that allow you to quickly generate cards in-app or via Chrome extension.

Repeet works on iOS, Android, or Chrome extension. Same for DuoCards: iOS, Android, or Chrome extension. DuoCards has a mini game and an AI chatbot designed to help you immerse yourself in the language more than just using the cards will, whereas Repeet is just flashcard-based, but the features will cost you. Where Repeet is absolutely usable and excellent in its free version, DuoCards' free version only allows 20 cards in your "to learn" category and just 10 opportunities to ask your chatbot a question. If you pay $33 for three months or $64.90 for the year, you get rid of the ads, access unlimited flashcards, and can chat nonstop with the AI bot. If mini games and immersion are important to you, pick DuoCards. If you just want flashcards or don't want to spend money, Repeet works well.

Bonus: Google's NotebookLM

Credit: Google

If you read a lot of my studying content, you know I'm a fiend for NotebookLM. If you don't read a lot of my studying content, I'll tell you why: This free resource is an AI chatbot that pulls only from materials you provide. That means you upload your slide decks, notes, links, videos, and PDFs from class and the answers it gives you will only come from those. I've seen ChatGPT make wild mistakes with homework, largely because it can and will pull from all over the Internet, so there's some safety baked in here.

NotebookLM can do a few things that help you study. It can summarize your materials or outline a paper, like any chatbot, but it can also produce a fake podcast of people discussing your materials, generate flashcards, and prepare you a practice quiz. In everything it provides, NotebookLM hyperlinks back to the exact section in your materials where it got that content, so if you get a flashcard or quiz question wrong, you can quickly find where the question came from and reread it. It's free to use, but the drawback is that it doesn't Leitner-ify the flashcards.

Access it in a browser through the website or via app on iOS and Android.

Perplexity's AI Browser Is Now Available for Free for Everyone

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Much has been said about Comet, Perplexity's web browser, not just because of its AI features, but also because of its paywall. Early access was initially reserved to a waitlist of Perplexity Max users, a subscription that costs $200 per month, before Perplexity opened up access to Perplexity Pro users, who only need to pay $20 per month. Still, seeing as most web browsers are free to use, I imagine most people still shied away from trying Comet because of the price.

If that sounds like you, there's good news. On Friday, Perplexity made Comet available to anyone who wants to try it for free. You don't need to subscribe to any Perplexity plan, nor do you even need a Perplexity account—though the company has some features tied to those who sign in. Comet is built on Chromium, so if you're coming from Chrome, or another Chromium browser like Edge, you'll be able to jump right in.

Installing Comet is as easy as any other web browser: just head to Perplexity's website, and choose "Download Comet." Even setting up the browser feels familiar, as you can import another Chrome profile, choose a profile pic, and set a name. But of course, the real advertised advantage here is the AI assistant. Like other AI-powered browsers, Comet has a built-in chatbot you can talk to about whatever it is you want—particularly the web pages you happen to be browsing. But Comet's AI is agentic, which means you can ask the AI to do things for you.

If you ask it to take you to a specific website, it will (though I'm not sure that's any faster than simply typing in the site by hand). If you ask it to open a specific link on the page, you can see the bot take over the page, and choose the URL you asked for. For example, I asked the assistant to open Lifehacker, then asked it to click on our article "How to Browse the Dark Web." It did both of these things, and even offered a summary of the dark web piece.

But Perplexity says you can also request more complex tasks: According to the company, the assistant can draft emails on your behalf, build websites, make purchases, create citations, add to your calendar. There's even a voice mode, as with other AI bots like ChatGPT or Gemini, so you can talk to the browser if you want to.

I'm still not sold on the idea that injecting agentic AI into my web browser is what I need to better experience the internet. Maybe I need to spend some time with Comet to experience that "future." But seeing how often the tech still makes mistakes—not the mention the untapped security risks—I'm not sure I want to hand off all of my browsing tasks to AI just yet. Still, if you're interested, you can give it a go without spending a dime.

Use This Four-Step Cycle to Learn New Concepts

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If you want to truly grasp what you’re learning, not just memorize it short-term for a test, you should familiarize yourself with Kolb’s learning cycle. Hell, even if you do just want to pass a test, you should familiarize yourself with Kolb’s learning cycle. Educational theorist David A. Kolb published his experiential learning theory in 1984 and it’s been popular ever since, at least among teachers. If you haven't heard of it, that's no issue; let's go over what it's all about so you can learn better.

What is Kolb’s four-step cycle?

Kolb proposed a cycle of four stages that, once passed through, will result in effective learning:

• Concrete learning: This happens when the learner has a new experience and uses it to reinterpret or reframe an existing one. As an example, say you gave a presentation and it didn't go as well as you hoped it would, even though you felt like you prepared for it. You had a new experience and it made you reframe what you considered solid preparation.

• Reflective observation: This occurs when the learner thinks about the experience in a personal way. In our presentation example, this could mean you reflected on how disengaged or confused your audience looked, then questioned whether it was your speaking speed or cluttered PowerPoint slides that contributed to that.

• Abstract conceptualization: This is the part when the learner forms or modifies ideas after reflecting. Maybe here, you came up with ideas to make your next presentation better, like cutting out extra info from your slides or speaking more slowly and with better eye contact.

• Active experimentation: Finally, this happens when the learner applies the new thinking and notes if anything changes. In active experimentation, let's say you applied what you learned during the last presentation and paid attention to see how the audience responded to your new approach.

Essentially, this method is a rigid, more academic way to describe the phenomenon of doing something, thinking about how you did it, and doing it again with some changes based on that reflection, which circles back around to the starting point of "doing something."

While these steps tend to happen in order, it’s important to note that you can technically enter the cycle at any stage. For instance, you might have an experience and reflect on it, form an idea about it, and apply your thinking to your broader understanding of it, then learn more concrete details and information about it in a new class a year later. Don't get too hung up on mastering this in order, but do familiarize yourself with the stages so you can learn to recognize and use them.

How Kolb's cycle looks in practice

Let’s say you’re studying accounting. You have personal experience like doing your own taxes or budgeting your paycheck, which is concrete learning. You gain more experience in class, being introduced to higher-level accounting concepts.

After learning those concepts, you can do reflective observation by thinking of how your own experiences budgeting match up with what you were just taught and whether what you just learned could have enhanced your old results.

In abstract conceptualization, you apply those reflections, considering whether they impact how you approach accounting in your life and whether you’d do anything differently next time you go to budget.

In active experimentation, you can try implementing new lessons from class in your own financial planning or working on practice exercises, informed by your own experiences and the new information. As you consider the outcome of the practical application, you start over again with the concrete learning you experienced during the exercise.

What to keep in mind about Kolb’s cycle

To me, the most crucial element here is the reflective observation. If you get a B on a quiz and don't go over what you did wrong, you'll get those same questions wrong on the midterm. Reflecting on what happened and what you can change is how you make the alterations you need in the future and what sets this apart as a learning and studying technique. After you study a new concept, try methods that force active recall—like blurting, which is saying or writing down all the content you can remember from the chapter or section—and take your time when going over what you got wrong.

This doesn't have to be a solo endeavor, either. If you're stuck on something, ask a professor or fellow student to walk you through it. Getting an outside perspective can help with reflective observation and abstract conceptualization, allowing you to reframe your thoughts on a topic.

Kolb’s cycle is usually meant for teachers to think about when lesson planning. Structural Learning, for instance, encourages educators to use this model in lessons to improve students’ understanding and problem solving. But since the goal of using the method is to encourage the acquisition of more abstract concepts—which can then be applied to a variety of topics and situations—it works for anyone. Keeping the four stages in mind while you study a new concept and reflecting on how you can hit each one will help you think more flexibly about the topic overall and help you retain what you’re learning.

Use the ‘Overlearning’ Technique to Commit Important Information to Your Long-Term Memory

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Do you want to learn the material you’re studying—like, really learn it? I'm not talking about learning enough to pass a test, but rather, learning enough that you know it for life. Then what you need to do is overlearn it. One learning theory suggests that if you overlearn, you’ll attain automaticity, or the ability to do something without having to think about it, and ultimately retain more knowledge. Here’s what overlearning is and how to do it.

What is overlearning?

You know something is serious when the American Psychological Association has a definition for it, and that’s the case here: Per the APA, overlearning is “practice that is continued beyond the point at which the individual knows or performs the task as well as can be expected.” The APA says the benefits here can include “increased persistence of the learning over time or better retention and memory.” The terminology makes sense; once you've learned something over the extent you need to, it becomes second nature.

Simply put, overlearning involves studying something even once you’re sure you know it, which is why this technique is overlooked and, if I'm being honest, a little annoying. It makes sense that once you get information down, you don't want to seemingly waste time going over it, but according to this theory, that is, unfortunately, when the magic happens. Don’t stop reviewing or studying just because you succeeded in memorizing something. Instead, keep going, digging it deeper and deeper into your brain.

Hermann Ebbinghaus, the researcher who brought us the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, studied memory in the 1890s, figuring out that as time passed, memories decreased. (That’s basically what the forgetting curve is all about and a pretty common-sense phenomenon you have certainly experienced in your own life.) According to him, overlearning happens when you keep repeating what you’re going over well past the point at which you can recall it with 100% accuracy. Think about a story you've told numerous times over your lifetime. If you hadn't started reciting it at parties and on first dates, the details may have gotten fuzzy, but since you did, it's practically a well-rehearsed performance at this point.

See, recalling it is something that takes effort. The goal of overlearning is to reach automaticity, pulling the information from your longterm memory with no effort and freeing up space in your working memory.

How do you overlearn?

The next time you’re studying, review material you already know front to back. For instance, when using the Leitner method (which involves spaced repetition of flash cards, the frequency of review of each depending on how well you did the last time you quizzed yourself on it), always review all the flashcards you’re assigned on a particular day, even if you feel like skipping them because you got them right last time. Repeatedly going over material you know well is the key to overlearning and eventual automatic recall.

Flashcards, in general, are a great way to study and they're perfect for this, especially if you're following the Leitner technique. Just because a flashcard has been moved into the section you study less frequently doesn't mean you should never go back to it. In fact, if you're trying to overlearn, it's one of the only times I'd recommend not using Leitner—at least not right away. For the first few days of reviewing your cards, go through all of them and don't sort them by whether you get the answers right or wrong. Just keep drilling the same information over and over again.

Another useful tool here is the practice of blurting, which is what we call it when you write down or say everything you can remember about a topic. That forces active recall—or the act of consciously yanking information out of your long-term memory—and trains you to quickly identify key details in your brain. At the end of every week, do a round of blurting, even if you nailed all the details last time around.

Schedule blocks of time in your week for reviewing materials you’ve already mastered when you're pre-planning your distributed practice. This can be as easy as re-reading a chapter or your notes, or as complex as taking practice quizzes or using flashcards. Continually reintroducing familiar ideas to yourself will dig them deeper into your longterm memory.