I saw a tweet while searching for windows 10 tweets and paul thurrot said you only get upgrades for 1 year. Is upgrade different from update? Do you continue to get security updates forever and just not new features or something? Can someone explain this Windows updates/upgrades free/paid situation please? Thanks.
The upgrade is free for one year, people trying to upgrade past that one year of free upgrade will have to pay. People who did upgrade during the year Microsoft offered the free upgrade will remain activated for free once this promotional year has expired.
From July 29th 2015 to 1 year after (July 29th 2016) you can use your Windows 7 with SP1 or Windows 8.1 system and upgrade to Windows 10 for free. You can download the upgrade through Windows Update and upgrade that way, or mount an ISO and run setup.exe and upgrade that way (Once you are upgraded to Windows 10 and activated you can do a clean install, but only after). After July 29th 2016 if you have any system and want Windows 10, you will need to pay for Windows 10, so after July 29th 2016 things to back to the way they have been for Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and so on. Upgrade is completely different from update. Microsoft will continue to provide updates to the operating system, those are security updates, driver updates, patch updates, etc., the same ones you have been getting so far. These updates will continue for as long as that operating system is supported (just like Windows XP ended a little while ago, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, etc., will end at some point, nothing is truly forever). All of this could change tomorrow as Microsoft can do really whatever they want with their products, but experience, common sense and marketing (and business) logic says that pretty much everything will go as stated by the company. I hope that clears the upgrade/update and free/paid question you had.
obviously,if you actually accept the updates and new features are in them,you will get the new features.
I read somewhere, (I did post the link somewhere on my replies but can't seem to find it) too that if you have a pirated version of windows 10 running on your system Ms will allow it but updates will have to be paid for ! I guess that will apply to most people running windows..... I upgraded all 3 of my machines but on 2 downgraded them to 8.1 again so only have the laptop running 10 pro ... ALL LIGIT VERSIONS OF THE SOFTWARE TOO .... Maybe when 10 gets a bit more stable I'll bring the other machines online again with 10 .... However I hate the idea of being forced to abide by Ms conditions especially the use of your private information !!!
Officially it was supposed to be for 1 year but as of now it is perhaps not clear if that will be extended. Is likely though but at sometime perhaps MS may start charging for it.
The 1 year thing is purely to move from 7 or 8.x to 10 for free, once you have done that, all other Windows 10 updates are free for life
The free upgrade to Windows 10 from previous Windows versions is ending on the 29 July 2016. Those who refuse to carry out their systems upgrade within that period would forfeit the opportunity to do so when the time elapsed. People still have close to six months to do that.
I'd bet that MS will extend the deadline past July 29, 2016. They have nothing to lose and will gain more Windows 7/8.1 users by extending. I don't think they make a majority of their profits selling Windows at this point. might as well just make it free permanently.
Windows 10 is free for the first year to have a gazillion beta testers for free. In my eyes Redstone will be the first real retail Windows 10 release. Edit: Look back some years how many people switched from 7 to 8 when the upgrade was only 15 Euros.
Well not one penny from me as I tried win 8 (not 8.1) and thought it was confusing so went back to Win 7
I think so too. I dont think they will hit the numbers they want by then so they will have to extend it. Also its the fastest way to move as many folks off the old OSes.
Windows has always had beta testers... With Win10 they've just got a lot more, is really the only difference. "Retail" Windows has never meant a "finished" Windows, either--all Windows versions have had years of free updates after the initial retail release. All OS releases (not just Windows) follow that pattern. I switched to 8 from 7 for $30 when the upgrade offer was made from Microsoft. The original plan was for Microsoft to upgrade Win 8.1 to 8.2, which would have included among other things a functioning start menu and a return to the desktop GUI as the default. This was scrapped when Microsoft decided that 8.x was so unpopular that it didn't want to spend anymore money polishing it--and Windows 10 was born. Win10 is what Win 8 should have been, in other words... Two years later...
For people with 8.x laptops/pc systems, with win 8.x pre-installed, win 10 will always be free, as long as the windows oemm bioskey is there (use the oem query tool from abbodi1406 to read out the bios).
People with Windows 7 or 8.x will pay after July 28 2016. Other users, who now installed win10 on PC and registration on the Insider Program , takes Redstone absolutely free ( as a insider build ).
I'm thinking the same thing. M$ would probably make more money if people could pay NOT to get W10 , or any of the toxic updates for W7 and W8 !
There was a discussion, that was with some higher up Windows 10 devs at Microsoft. Microsoft internally was discussing the option of a subscription based Windows. Kind of like Office 365. With the rumor mill floating around it was posted to a bunch of sites. It was only a discussion, not ever approved. A lot of sites ran with it, till Microsoft publicly said updates were free forever on 10. The 1 year, thing was only for the free upgrade to Windows 10 from 7 or 8.1...
