Next version of Windows slated for free upgrade...for the fist year at least

Microsoft unveils new details about Windows 10. Offers free upgrade for users if you are currently on Win 7, 8, or 8.1.

Windows 10

Should say "first" year in title, my bad

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Comments

stryder144

Good idea, though I question the one year free upgrade offer. Why just one year? Yet another weird MS-ism.

ally_uk

That's because it will suck!

joking

On a serious note I haven't upgraded from 7 yet haven't really had the need or incentive to 7 has served me well and fulfills all my computing needs.
Am I right in thinking that 7 is the new XP and companies will continue to use and support it?

Who am I kidding I am a Linux fanboy anyways

but my own opinion is Windows 7 serves the purpose why the need for 10?

techfiend

The within one year upgrade policy lowers the odds of it being a business OS, we'll see if SP1 is released by then, which would improve the odds.

I like the idea and hope the upgrade is less painful then the previous ones I've done.

Deathmage

Anyone in IT knows not to jump on the new iteration of Windows for at-least 6 months so all the SP's get out.... Even if Microsoft offered me a huge discount I'd still (even though I hate it) get Windows 8.1 over Windows 10 just because of the pure fact that some 2+ billion souls on planet earth have already reported most of the bugs...

varelg

There are some fishy parts to this free "upgrade":
1. Let's call it "switch" and not "upgrade". As a Windows 7 user (and Android, on my mobile devices), I really don't see absolutely ANY compelling reason to switch to the new Windows 10. There's really no new functionality introduced here. Nothing revolutionary new or not available from 3-rd parties. Why should I switch then? To see the Start Menu go full screen? To listen to Cortana? Nothing compelling here...
2. The veiled subscription announcement. The MS presenter mentioned "Windows as a service" (according to some news reports). So are we seeing MS charging subscription for Win 10 machines after the first year? There's a lot of speculation on this part out there. The subscription part really stinks. One more reason to stick to Win 7.
Providing that subscription part is true and that MS will go on and charge subscription for using their OS, Linux folks got a real opening here, by an order of magnitude bigger than the Vista flop. The Year of The Linux Desktop may finally be on the horizon, not because Linux desktop is THAT better but because MS went for the pocket of the regular user.
Some would say that Mac sales could soar, but looking at the price of their hardware, I'd say not likely...

kohr-ah

stryder144 wrote: »

Good idea, though I question the one year free upgrade offer. Why just one year? Yet another weird MS-ism.

Think about it from a business standpoint really. I offer a product for free but you have 1 year to redeem to get your CD-Key and ISO download (Or they will keep offering the ISO and you have 1 year to get a key). I have to pay engineers, marketing, etc to pay for my product.

Every copy that is downloaded I am considering as a loss to an extent. Exceptions to this are new PCs who want a licensed copy of windows or manufacturers who get a massive bulk deal.

Could it be longer. Yarp. However, if I want you to use my product on your machine what better way than limit how long you can get it for free to drive people to get it and install it.

techfiend

I noticed the windows service too. It sounds like it might be a subscription and knowing microsoft they might twist this into it's free to use until it's been out for a year then subscription is required. It probably won't be inexpensive either.

It would push a lot of people to look for alternatives and while I'd like linux desktop, it has a long way to go to be even a decent desktop os, great for servers though.

There's a little glimmer of hope that microsoft is offering free\very cheap retail os's given the report on windows 8 for tablets being free\cheap and hopefully a respectable push for FOSS this time. The ceo, Nadella, doesn't have much of a track record, so far it's been positive, and may be the first microsoft ceo to care more about the consumer than maximizing profits.

CCIE Wanna Be

Yeah, even though Adobe isn't an OS, they went to this subscription-based model, much to an avid user's chagrin.

hurricane1091

Isn't the idea that it will be free permanently, but this is only being offered for 1 year after Windows 10 is released? So if you come in on the 366th day, you cannot download it for free -- you will need to pay.

stryder144

The Microsoft website states "This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost. With Windows 10, the experience will evolve and get even better over time. We’ll deliver new features when they’re ready, not waiting for the next major release. We think of Windows as a Service – in fact, one could reasonably think of Windows in the next couple of years as one of the largest Internet services on the planet." So, there shouldn't be any costs after acquisition.

@kohr-ah...I can definitely understand it from a business perspective. They are probably trying to drive market share for the OS as quickly as possible, especially since Windows 7 still has over 50% of the market and Windows 8.x struggles to meet/exceed Windows XP's installed base. In my opinion, if someone owns a copy of Windows 7/8/8.1, then they have paid the price of entry to receive Windows 10. It shouldn't matter whether or not I choose to upgrade to 10 now or in the future. It really doesn't cost them any more for me to upgrade at day 366 as it does 365. That is why I find the time limit to be so "weird". Of course, that might just be me...

tpatt100

Microsoft more than likely wants to get as many people as possible on the current or most recent operating system. I know Apple likes to always put out it's numbers for OS X and iOS showing adoption rates for it's current operating system soon after it is released. I think the time limit is like the special limited pricing they did with Windows 8 which didn't work out so well so they just made it free to push people forward.

Since the majority of their consumer desktop/laptop Windows business is OEM manufacturers and not people going out and buying a copy of Windows by itself they probably won't lose much money anyways. Windows 7 is going to be the next XP anyways so they probably want to encourage us to move forward since they seem to be finally going with the "whole ecosystem being universal approach" now.

Windows might as well be a service for me because I really don't use "Windows" itself anyways. The majority of my computer time isn't on the desktop it's on my iPad followed by my iPhone. Since Microsoft dropped it's "our way or the highway" approach and released good supported versions of their services for iOS I dropped iCloud paid service and switched to paying for OneDrive increased storage. I bought a Surface Pro 3 a few months ago because now I can do stuff on my iPad and iPhone and continue it on the Surface Pro with OneDrive sync and Microsoft Office.

I just wish Microsoft didn't take so long to finally do something about Windows gaming, they put so much effort into Xbox only it seems but "now" is talking about Windows 10 PC and Xbox One. I would have bought an Xbox One if I could buy once and play anywhere if it was available before.

gorebrush

Just upgraded to 8.1 from 7 and will jump to 10 as soon as I can. Looks great.

I suspect it's free to win back all the consumers who hated 8.

MTciscoguy

In truth, I have not found windows 8.1 to be to bad, after a few tweeks in certain areas, it works fine and in 2 years I have not had one crash, don't get me wrong, I ran XP for a long time and still have some boxes here that run XP and we have a couple of units running Win 7 64 bit, my media computer is a 7/64 box. Once I figure out the start menu thing and installed a small program to change it to a regular start menu, it works almost like the win 7 unit. Microsofts major problem with win 8 was allowing it to be released on non-touch screen machines, major mistake.

tpatt100

I am feeling dangerous, downloading the Technical Preview right now and going to load it on my Surface Pro 3 this weekend.

joehalford01

Its simple. Android and IOS are essentially free in the eyes of the consumer. You buy a device and the OS is there. You get updates that are free (android) or low cost (I think they charge on MAC upgrades? not 100% on this). Bottom line is that people don't want to pay $140 for an Operating System anymore, so Microsoft is getting with the times and is going to make money on their ecosystem - music, movies, apps etc and the easiest way to do that is have a bunch of developers sign on because the user base is huge. It will be huge when everyone running windows 7 upgrades.....

stryder144

@tpatt100 - I have both the consumer and enterprise versions loaded onto a couple of VMs. I rather enjoy them, though I must admit, they haven't really added too many new features. Stable, reasonably fast, and no crashes yet.

Kuroki

Has anyone here actually upgraded to it? I've been considering it but I really don't want to do something that I might end up regretting soon after.

gorebrush

Installing my 3rd PC with the 10 Technical Preview now. It's seriously nice.

Priston

I don't think anyone has upgraded to it since it's still in Technical Preview.

Windows 10 will launch in late-2015. The Technical Preview will end on 15 April 2015.

If your upgrading your primary computer, I'd create a backup before the upgrade...

RobertKaucher

So, at this point everyone understands that what they mean by "free for the first year" is that if you meet the criteria of getting a free upgrade to Windows 10 you will have one year from the date of RTM to take advantage of the free upgrade. The offer expires after the first year, it's not that people who upgrade will have to pay a subscription fee after that.

On another note, my work laptop has been running Win 10 for a while now and I upgraded to the new build on Friday. It seems like it's causing an issue with my sound card but I have not had time to turn the laptop on. It also annoys me that even though my location and UI language are set to English US/-5 GMT when I swap keyboard layouts or change languages in Office suddenly Cortana thinks I'm in another country and won't work. But I have the same issue with Chrome. If I search Google in another language they want to display "only results in English" and I have to either change a setting in Chrome, in my Google preferences, or use advanced search to get Google to display the results I want. I regularly work in multiple languages. It should not be so damn hard to understand that if Google detects that I am searching for word in Portuguese, I probably want results that are in Portuguese.

tpatt100

I didn't upgrade this weekend, made the install USB stick but I need to back up the recovery partition on my Surface Pro first.