Free Windows 10 upgrade offer’s days are numbered

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

I just wanted to bring this thread back. Just checked today, sure enough just a stunt.

If you use assistive technologies, you can upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost as Microsoft continues our efforts to improve the Windows 10 experience for people who use these technologies. Please take advantage of this offer before it expires on January 16, 2018.

Let's see what it says in 48 hours.

EDIT: link to it.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

 

[fencepost]

This got a lot more significant because of Meltdown & Spectre - the OS fixes for those apparently have a lot more impact on Windows 7 & 8 because there's more jumping back and forth between kernel and user for things like font rendering.

 

[Porthos]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/324...rom-windows-81-to-windows-10-in-24-hours.html

Can we say for certain whether January 16 is the absolute, drop-dead, pinky-swear, final cutoff for the assistive upgrade? No, we can’t. It’s possible that Microsoft really wants users to upgrade to Windows 10 and is using the loophole as an perpetually extensible back door of sorts to allow upgrades. It’s also possible that Microsoft’s moment of mercy will end soon.

 

[Krynn72]

After this it will probably stop being for people who use assistive tech, but only for 85+ year old users. You'll just need to check a box that says "yes I'm 85 or older".

Then that will expire in 2019, and change to only for kids 10 and under get the free upgrade, again with the honor system of ticking the "yes i'm ten or younger" checkbox. In 2020 you'll just need to have an ichy butt to qualify.

 

[Mr. Ingram's Computer Repair & Shoppe]

After this it will probably stop being for people who use assistive tech, but only for 85+ year old users. You'll just need to check a box that says "yes I'm 85 or older".

Then that will expire in 2019, and change to only for kids 10 and under get the free upgrade, again with the honor system of ticking the "yes i'm ten or younger" checkbox. In 2020 you'll just need to have an ichy butt to qualify.

Changing pants now.... That was good!

 

[fencepost]

I'm still spending the evening at the customer I was discussing before who just bought a bunch of equipment. Since it's a medical office, the outgoing doctor (well, her husband) wiped all drives, I'm guessing DBAN or similar. Since Windows needs to be reinstalled on them anyway, I'm taking the convenience route of Win10 from a flash drive rather than Windows 7 or 8 from Dell recovery DVDs that were piled in a box in the server room.

I'm also going to push him towards 2016 Essentials rather than reinstalling the SBS2011 that was originally on the server. "Sure, you can have me install and update 2011, buy a few more CALs since you have more than 5 users, then do it again in 2 years when it's EOLed, or you can just pay $550ish and get Essentials that will cover you up to 25 users/devices. By the way, the CALs you need will probably cost around the same price as 2016 Essentials."

 

[Mainstay]

I have a customer who's agreed to purchase all the systems from a practice that's closing. They're a mix of Dell Optiplexes that came with Win7Pro and Win8/8.1Pro, but they're all running Win7Pro. Handover in mid-January. I was really hoping to be able to get in there before the end of the year to be sure all of them were activated for Windows 10 Pro, because anything they're going to actually be using I want to be able to put Bitlocker on with no difficulties.

"No, we're still working and can't let you touch any of the systems" after I'd explained what I was going to be doing (boot an SSD with Win10, change key, reactivate). Not something worth fighting about, but mildly annoying. I was figuring probably 2-3 hours, mostly because I'd have been installing Win10 first using one of the machines since I don't have an Optiplex 3010/3020 handy.

Doesn't hit the refurbishing question, because this is strictly a user-to-user used equipment sale.

Why would you want to upgrade an office of W7Pro systems to W10Pro? This is ideal. My clients much prefer their new systems to be running W7Pro. None of the nonsense interface of W10. So what if it limits them to 6th gen chips, the SSD and reasonable RAM keep them flying. I know it won't last forever, but we are holding back from W10 as much as we ever held back from Vista while XP was the king.

That being said, I do agree, installing the latest build of Windows 10 from USB 3 to an SSD is lightening fast and it makes the turn around time much improved.

 

[GTP]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/324...rom-windows-81-to-windows-10-in-24-hours.html

Can we say for certain whether January 16 is the absolute, drop-dead, pinky-swear, final cutoff for the assistive upgrade? No, we can’t. It’s possible that Microsoft really wants users to upgrade to Windows 10 and is using the loophole as an perpetually extensible back door of sorts to allow upgrades. It’s also possible that Microsoft’s moment of mercy will end soon.

It's already January 16 here. I upgraded one Win 7 home and one Win 7 pro to Win 10 Home and Win 10 Pro today without any problems whatsoever.

Meltdown & Spectre - the OS fixes for those apparently have a lot more impact on Windows 7 & 8

I haven't noticed any impact on performance on any of my (or my clients) Win 7/8 systems. Yet.

 

[Your PCMD]

Its the 16th today for me. Just broke out another ProBook with Windows 7 Pro. This time I did not upgrade it. I did a clean install and used the Windows 7 Pro key on the bottom. Windows 10 installed and when I connected to the internet, it activated. I will do another one tomorrow however since it would be past the "free" upgrade time.

 

[Mick]

Its the 16th today for me. Just broke out another ProBook with Windows 7 Pro. This time I did not upgrade it. I did a clean install and used the Windows 7 Pro key on the bottom. Windows 10 installed and when I connected to the internet, it activated. I will do another one tomorrow however since it would be past the "free" upgrade time.

I'll be interested to see how that goes. I've got three or four to do over the next week.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Why would you want to upgrade an office of W7Pro systems to W10Pro? This is ideal. My clients much prefer their new systems to be running W7Pro. None of the nonsense interface of W10. So what if it limits them to 6th gen chips, the SSD and reasonable RAM keep them flying. I know it won't last forever, but we are holding back from W10 as much as we ever held back from Vista while XP was the king..

IMO. the leap from XP to Vista, or even 95B or 98SE to ME...those were horrible. Performance went down.
The leap from Win8 to 10 is more just a...people don't like the interface thing, not a performance drop though....if anything, a hair faster.

But my big thing is...we passed the point of the OS having a shorter lifespan now than the hardware it's coming on, if you get biz grade hardware with a 3 year warranty. I just feel weird selling a 3 year workstation with an OS that will expire sooner.

We're all biz clients, no residential. Usually biz clients are the last holdout for an OS release..typically 18 months after release at the earliest. We've passed that point. Most LOB apps and peripherals like big office MFPs are supporting it now.

 

[Porthos]

I just feel weird selling a 3 year workstation with an OS that will expire sooner.

I would feel the same way if I was selling new biz machines as well considering the 6-8 biz refurbs work just fine with 10.

 

[fencepost]

Why would you want to upgrade an office of W7Pro systems to W10Pro?

• Built-in Bitlocker support without upgrading to Enterprise or Ultimate or going with a third-party disk encryption system. Easily integrated with a domain, well-supported, etc. Even if no patient data was ever being stored on the systems, being able to say "All systems in the office have encrypted hard drives." has value.
  
• https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/mi...-and-meltdown-mitigations-on-windows-systems/ most notably "Older versions of Windows have a larger performance impact because Windows 7 and Windows 8 have more user-kernel transitions because of legacy design decisions, such as all font rendering taking place in the kernel."
• Future-proofing. They're 4th generation i5s with a mix of 4 or 8GB. They're likely to be quite serviceable machines for at least 2 more years. That's also why last year I was doing my "activation hack" where I was swapping around a Windows 10 SSD and activating on each system to "reserve" an activation.
• In this case, I didn't have an office of W7Pro systems. I had an office of Dell Optiplex 3020 and 3010 systems with wiped hard drives that originally shipped with either W7P or W8P. I was going to have to install something on them anyway, because "No boot device" does not make for a useful computer. Similarly, I have a low-end 6th generation HP server (single processor, 16GB RAM, 6-drive hot swap RAID) that's currently unformatted - I could put on SBS2011 from the disks I have, but I'd just as soon jump it to 2016 even if all it's going to be is a DC and file/print server.

I haven't noticed any impact on performance on any of my (or my clients) Win 7/8 systems. Yet.

There may not end up being much, but frankly we're going to see that play out over the next few months. For example, most people aren't running on new microcode for the processors yet - even if they have a fully up-to-date AV and the relevant Windows patches. I have no faith at all that those are the last Windows updates we'll be seeing related to this - in fact, I expect to see at least 1 and perhaps 2 more "out of band" updates from Microsoft related to Meltdown/Spectre within the first quarter of 2018.

 

[sapphirescales]

I'm a 100% Windows 10 shop with a few obvious exceptions (I have some clients that still use DOS and Windows 95/98 boxes for dedicated purposes, and a few clients stuck on XP due to ancient software). I've even moved all my clients on 32 bit Windows 7 to 32 bit Windows 10. Yes, Windows 10 does have annoyances. But really it's the only viable option left. It was one thing to stick with Windows XP when Vista was the latest OS because 7 turned out to be great. But when you have 2 stinkers in a row (in this case, 8 and 10), you don't have much choice. I still think 8 was MUCH worse than 10 is. But I don't do Windows 10 without an SSD because it performs like CRAP regardless of the processor or memory. Thankfully 96% of my clients have SSD's.

 

[fencepost]

And to somewhat wrap things up, today on https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

"Thank you for your interest in Windows 10. The free upgrade offer extension for Windows 7 and Windows 8 customers who use assistive technologies expired on December 31, 2017. As an alternative, Windows 10 software and devices are available for purchase from retail and online stores."

Unclear to me whether that will also prevent activations for installs done with previously-created install media. I may find myself wishing I'd created ISOs for the various flavors rather than using my trusty Win10Pro x64 flash drive.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Do you still have a prior media creation tool? Perhaps it can still create the necessary media.

 

[Porthos]

Do you still have a prior media creation tool? Perhaps it can still create the necessary media.

you still can get the ISO's from here. https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techn...icrosoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool

 

[seashore]

I would have thought that any version of the media creation tool should still work for reinstalls IF the computer successfully activated any version of Win10 prior to this deadline.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

If the system was activated prior to the end of the upgrade, it should auto activate. Perhaps he's asking about a prior ISO to see if systems that didn't get the upgrade can activate?

That said, I never used the assistive upgrade method. Usually just doing a straight upgrade or a clean install with a valid Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key would activate the system, even after the free upgrade ended. Not sure if that is still the case now. One way to find out....

 

[nlinecomputers]

That said, I never used the assistive upgrade method. Usually just doing a straight upgrade or a clean install with a valid Windows 7 or Windows 8 product key would activate the system, even after the free upgrade ended. Not sure if that is still the case now. One way to find out....

So far from reports, I have seen that has NOT changed. However, there have been some reports of issues doing a new fresh install. It does work if you run the upgrade from within Windows 7 or 8.