Microsoft Gives Away Windows 10 'free' Upgrade

Microsoft to give away Windows 10 as free upgrade



Microsoft Corp will give away its upcoming Windows 10 operating system as a free upgrade to users of the most recent versions of Windows and Windows Phone, as the world's largest software company tries to hold onto customers in the new mobile era that has largely bypassed it.

The announcement by Terry Myerson, who runs Microsoft's operating systems group, is a marked change for Microsoft, which has charged for new versions of Windows, one of its main profit drivers.

The new 'free' strategy is aimed at establishing Windows on as many devices as possible, and then trying to make up for lost revenue by selling valuable services such as Office over the internet, or cloud.

"It's a necessary evil as CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft have recognized the 'golden goose' and major revenue opportunities will happen after the upgrades have taken place" said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets.

"Microsoft needs to lay seeds for its cloud-centric strategy and Windows 10 is the epicenter of that strategy. It's all about making it attractive for the ecosystem to upgrade onto this next-generation platform."

Windows 10, expected on the market this autumn, will be available for one year as a free upgrade to users of Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, Myerson said.

The move is a recognition that, in the last decade, Windows, featured on roughly 15 percent of computing devices including phones and tablets, has become largely irrelevant for many consumers. Microsoft hopes that by making the software free, it will attract the more than 1 billion personal computer users of Windows to run it on other devices.



The new approach, which Myerson called "Windows as a service" takes a similar approach to Apple Inc and Google Inc, which regularly update their software systems free for customers.

The move was "inevitable," according to Forrester analyst Frank Gillett.

"The way to motivate consumers is to make upgrades transparent and painless - meaning free and low-to-no effort," he said. "Microsoft had to match the expectation set by the mobile and Web leaders."

At an event to show off some upcoming features in Windows 10, Microsoft also unveiled its Cortana voice-activated search function for the PC desktop, which has only been available on mobile devices.

Executives also showed off an Xbox app for games on Windows 10 and a new version of its browser code named 'Spartan', which lets users make notes on Web pages and share them.

Microsoft announced its new Windows 10 operating system in September, billing it as a move to unify all kinds of device users. It skipped Windows 9 altogether, to put some distance between the new system and Windows 8, which confused many users by ditching the start button menu and using a new layout.

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i remember a thread discussing this possibility many many months ago. Well now it seems they are going through with it.

Of course those of us still on XP dont get a damn thing... /cry

Dude, upgrade already.

Do you need a copy of the .iso ?

Microsoft Think Tank 1: How do we give consumers the impression that we are ahead of the curve?

Microsoft Think Tank 2: I know! We skip windows 9 and go straight to 10!

Microsoft Think Tank 1: Brilliant T2! Brilliant.

i was planning on getting a whole new comp with new os. But s*** keeps coming up. Ive spent a good 1-2k in the last few months on unexpected vet bills. And now im looking for a new place to live as well. So most other things like that got put on hold.

Ive spent a good 1-2k in the last few months on unexpected vet bills.

If you have something with at least a dual core you can run 7 at least halfday decent.

You're an AMD guy aren't you?

Actually I personally prefer Intel, but I'll usually find a price point I'm willing to spend on and find a cpu with $/performance in that area and go from there.

Also running an nvidia card.

Why?

I didn't even know DDR2 supported up to 8gb.

What's the technical reasons for skipping Windows 9 btw?

The question is:
Why should I update from Windows 7 to 10?

I don't have a particular problem with a free upgrade, as long as I also retain the ability to go back to 7 (i.e. not invalidate my key) if I don't like 10.

The new shiny isn't good enough. Moving from XP to 7 move enough of the system options around to be painful, and 8 was even worse.

I don't need to learn a new place to go to in order to configure my network adapter, or install hardware drivers, or change environment variables (although the last has been relatively consistent).
I espeically don't need to know them all to be able to work on very old computers, relatively old computers, recent computers, and new computers.
If you are going to keep changing that, then *** you, I might as well use linux for the amount of time spent *** around with it.

Most are saying due to some legacy code to detect OS version would be seeing 9x, I've read other stuff over the course since it was announced, and don't recall if it was confirmed or not.

Essentially what you said; it's supposedly because of the two previous versions of Windows starting with '9', Windows 95 and 98. The legacy code would see the 9, hiccup, we'd be caught in an all-encompassing paradox and all of time and space would explode.

Was Windows Millennium Edition not considered a full release? Makes sense since it was pretty much 98 but just wondering cause if it did then technically Win8 is Win9.

Maybe it's lolVista that doesn't count.

I always thought 2000 was a regular release. Didn't know it was NT.

Windows 2000 is an operating system for use on both client and server computers. It was produced by Microsoft and released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999[5] and launched to retail on February 17, 2000.[6] It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the last version of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation.[7] It is succeeded by Windows XP (released in October 2001) and Windows Server 2003 (released in April 2003). During development, Windows 2000 was known as Windows NT 5.0.

Four editions of Windows 2000 were released: Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter Server;[8]

Most are saying due to some legacy code to detect OS version would be seeing 9x, I've read other stuff over the course since it was announced, and don't recall if it was confirmed or not.

Have to say, I felt like throwing a laptop with windows 8 out the window after about 10 minutes of using it.

I've never encountered that level of frustration OS since having to work with SCO Unixware. And I've had to work with quite a few different/weird ones (Looking at you, Novell Netware).

Some are frustratingly slow, some are frustratingly complicated. With windows 8, I got all the prettyness of a GUI, and all of the intuitiveness of a command line interface. THAT GETS RID OF THE POINT OF A GUI.