Windows 10 to be a free upgrade from 7 and 8

I guess after infecting us with the touchy malware known as 8, this gesture to offer a free upgrade, for a year anyway, is a smart move.
 
Actually, I'm running a Win10 preview on a 6-year old Dell Latitude E6500 laptop w/ an SSD and 8 Gb of RAM, and it's running MUCH more smoothly than Windows 7 was. While the bloating was true with Vista, it will not be true with Windows 10.
 
ccritchie said:
Actually, I'm running a Win10 preview on a 6-year old Dell Latitude E6500 laptop w/ an SSD and 8 Gb of RAM, and it's running MUCH more smoothly than Windows 7 was. While the bloating was true with Vista, it will not be true with Windows 10.
Click to expand...
Almost any system with an SSD and 8GB of RAM will perform well...what about for the consumer with an older hard drive, and 2GB of RAM?
 
lcoughey said:
A free upgrade, but they'll make it so bloated that no current hardware will be able to run it.
Click to expand...

That would make no sense. All that would do is improve sales for hardware vendors and alienate windows users to the point adoption of win 10 would be worse than 8.
The whole point of making it free is to get everyone on the same platform instead of spread across several versions of windows, which a free upgrade will do.

I have win 10 running on an old HP 6000 pro, works just fine.
 
It will be very interesting to see how they implement this, and how we techs will deal with the consequences. Many of us are only now coming to grips with W8 reinstalls and UEFI bios issues.

I predict that about 18 months from now (if not sooner!) Technibble is going to be full of threads about how to reinstall/repair W10 on a previously upgraded machine that is now missing the original recovery partition and the customer doesn't have whatever will fill in for a license for W10 upgrade. Can't just reinstall W7 or W8 by whatever means and upgrade again - we'll be outside the upgrade Window.

If the whole process was complicated for end users before, it's going to get even more so for a long time.

I see opportunity and money on the horizon.
 
Found this from Paul Thurrott.
“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 additional charge.” This suggests to me that keeping Windows 10 up-to-date going forward is not optional. That in order to get this offer—or perhaps just to get Windows 10 as a consumer, regardless—will require you to let Microsoft keep your system up to date.
 
altrenda said:
Found this from Paul Thurrott.
“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 additional charge.” This suggests to me that keeping Windows 10 up-to-date going forward is not optional. That in order to get this offer—or perhaps just to get Windows 10 as a consumer, regardless—will require you to let Microsoft keep your system up to date.
Click to expand...

The quagmire deepens . . ."supported lifetime of the device" doesn't mean for as long as the device is still working. Since they won't be able to just disable Windows saying "your device is no longer supported", I see an Android scenario appearing where someday some devices receive Windows updates/upgrades and many others do not.
 
mraikes said:
It will be very interesting to see how they implement this, and how we techs will deal with the consequences. Many of us are only now coming to grips with W8 reinstalls and UEFI bios issues.

I predict that about 18 months from now (if not sooner!) Technibble is going to be full of threads about how to reinstall/repair W10 on a previously upgraded machine that is now missing the original recovery partition and the customer doesn't have whatever will fill in for a license for W10 upgrade. Can't just reinstall W7 or W8 by whatever means and upgrade again - we'll be outside the upgrade Window.

If the whole process was complicated for end users before, it's going to get even more so for a long time.

I see opportunity and money on the horizon.
Click to expand...

Sadly PCs will be so cheap by then no sod will want us to repair them :(
 
JustInspired said:
Free? Nah, its a 365 day trial version. :D
Click to expand...
that's exactly the way I read it. "free upgrade for the first year", meaning you have to start paying for the subscription on the 366th day.

if this is true, imagine how irate a lot of customers are going to be when they find out the hard way their pc is now bricked after a year and asking for a credit card number
 
If all of our concerns about this are valid, then Win10 might be dead on arrival. Nobody is going to want to pay for windows this way and people buying new machines will start demanding Win7 again. I guess we just have to wait for clarification.
 
The free issue is being discussed in many other forums and the outcome is Windows 10 is free to download for the first year, after that you'll have to pay for it if you don't already have it. Once you have it, it's free for the life of the device it's installed on and upgrades are also free.

Basically no subscription required at any point.

I firmly believe it is being offered for free to get the business side to adopt it quicker than their normal adoption rate. Remember many businesses were still running Win XP when MS completely stopped supporting it.

The Fortune 1000 companies will be in no hurry to install Win 10 until they have thoroughly tested it with all of the software they are using. The biggest kicker is going to be the new browser and it's going to have to be verified compatible with every "cloud" based application being used.
 
Mercenary Roadie said:
The free issue is being discussed in many other forums and the outcome is Windows 10 is free to download for the first year, after that you'll have to pay for it if you don't already have it. Once you have it, it's free for the life of the device it's installed on and upgrades are also free.

Basically no subscription required at any point.

I firmly believe it is being offered for free to get the business side to adopt it quicker than their normal adoption rate. Remember many businesses were still running Win XP when MS completely stopped supporting it.

The Fortune 1000 companies will be in no hurry to install Win 10 until they have thoroughly tested it with all of the software they are using. The biggest kicker is going to be the new browser and it's going to have to be verified compatible with every "cloud" based application being used.
Click to expand...
This.

Microsoft has already stated that they want to bring the Windows user base to a unified level and then offer updates every 6 months or so. There was even talk of doing away with the version number. Windows 10 would be just "Windows" Being that most all users get Windows bundled with a PC and few upgrade this is a way to change that by making such updates in the background and automatic. Like updates on your phone. And also like your phone the new money for Microsoft is going to be the app store. Nice idea but I suspect it is too late.
 
Mercenary Roadie said:
The free issue is being discussed in many other forums and the outcome is Windows 10 is free to download for the first year, after that you'll have to pay for it if you don't already have it. Once you have it, it's free for the life of the device it's installed on and upgrades are also free. Basically no subscription required at any point.
.
Click to expand...

Is this coming from Microsofts mouth or is it just the consensus of the geeks and nerds ? I find it hard to believe that MS is going to give away tens of millions of copies of Win10 and support it for years for free. We have people bringing in 6-8 year old machines all the time. If you get a decent machine now with 8gb ram and a big drive that thing can last at least 5 years. I can see people building a nice box now and not paying MS anything for many years. Just sounds like a huge chunk of money that MS is giving away.
 
NYJimbo,

Just read Microsoft's press release. Windows 10 is free for the first year after it is released and they will keep it updated until the device is no longer supported a no charge.
 
From the Microsoft Blogs: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/

We announced that a free upgrade for Windows 10 will be made available to customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 who upgrade in the first year after launch.*

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.
Click to expand...

*Hardware and software requirements apply. No additional charge. Feature availability may vary by device. Some editions excluded. More details at http://www.windows.com.
Click to expand...
 
Keep in mind they're not doing it to be nice: http://qz.com/331027/microsofts-windows-10-will-be-a-free-upgrade-because-it-has-to-be

They're desperate as usual, and apparently the plan is to make up for it by milking everybody dry with software subscriptions (Office 365, Skydrive, etc.)--a game Adobe and others are already playing.

I've installed 10 on two decade-old laptops. It runs beautifully on one and horribly on the other. Not sure why.
 
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