Earlier on this month I had a question from a customer asking what would happen at the end of July when the free upgrade to Windows 10 finishes. If you have a windows computer, running Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 then you couldn’t have help but notice that Microsoft have been trying pretty hard to “encourage” you to upgrade to Windows 10. If you haven’t noticed then I suspect you haven’t had your computer turned on!
The offer for a free upgrade started last July and has been available for the past 12 months, and increasingly during this time Microsoft have resorted to some pretty effective, and wrong methods in my opinion, to get Windows 10 on your computer. A few months ago they made the update a “recommended update” which means that it will automatically be installed unless you specifically stop the automatic updates.
What will happen when the free upgrade to Windows 10 deadline passes?
Well the deadline currently is July 29th 2016 and the fact is that nobody (other than a few people in Microsoft I guess) knows what will happen, anyone that tells you differently is either lying, guessing or has much better influence within Microsoft than I do 🙂
So…what’s likely to happen? There are two scenarios as I see it, either Microsoft will extend the free period, sending all sort of “last chance to update now” type messages to those still on Windows 7 or 8 or they will enforce the deadline and those people will have to purchase Windows 10. The price of Windows 10 (on Microsoft’s UK store) is currently £99.99, although that is the full product and not the “upgrade”. Usually Microsoft offer substantial discounts for upgrading from a previous product, so I imagine if they do end up enforcing the deadline they will offer a discounted priced version for those still on Windows 7 or 8.
If you decide you simply do not want to upgrade then the answer is simple, just use one of the tools available to stop the upgrade nags and you can carry on happily with whatever operating system you have – I have written a number of times about these tools, drop me an email if you need a link.
If you decide that you would like to upgrade to Windows 10 at some point but don’t want to have to pay for it then you can upgrade to Windows 10 before the deadline – yes of course this has risks but I’ve covered that plenty of times in previous articles, have a look at www.bluemoonsolutions.es/windows-10-after-the-dust-has-settled for more information. Once you have upgraded (and more critically, as part of this upgrade your licence is also registered as a Windows 10 licence) you can downgrade back to your previous operating system (a simple thing to do in the first month of Windows 10), you can then upgrade at any time in the future you like (for free).
If you decide that you want to take this option then you should also download your own copy of Windows 10. You can download and burn to DVD or USB stick a copy of Windows 10, in order to do this, you should use the “Windows RTM ISO file”, you can find links to this tool on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bluemoonsolutionsspain – we posted them on the 29th July last year. Using this tool, you can have your own “official” copy of Windows 10 on a USB stick or on a DVD, however (and here’s the rub), that copy of Windows 10 is useless without a Windows 10 product key (licence) and you can only get one of those by either performing the upgrade pre July 2016 or by buying one afterwards (assuming they don’t extend the dates of course).