Explaining Windows 10's free upgrade offer: Who'll get it, who won't?

[lazer]

I think any one who upgrades from win7 before they get the bugs out of win10 is just stupid. Win7 was the last decent working OS that Micro$lop made. Why jump from a safe OS to a maybe?

I'll wait a long time before going to an upgrade with anything from Micro$loop.

 

[noel24]

Brace Yourself! Wint...dows, windows is coming!

 

[Evernessince]

Can anyone please clarify for me?

I'm running windows 10 installed from scratch. What if I don't want to be an insider but I do have a windows 7 and 8 key? Do I have to downgrade and then upgrade again, or can I use one of the previously mentioned keys?

 

[Mister_K]

Microsoft's intention is clear: drive massive adoption of its latest operating system on most modern PCs. Windows 7 is found on nearly half of all Windows-based PCs and a wide majority of that hardware will be equally capable to run the more secure, up to date version of the OS.

Well, they aren't going a great way about it. Utter fail. They should offer W10 free to all XP era users. Those machines need to be upgraded as it only complicates the lives of many, specially developers.

 

[Mister_K]

Does a shopping mall charge you to enter the building? Does a restaurant charge you to get in the door? Absolutely not. You shouldn't have to pay any money for the ability to spend money. I never did understand why people paid $50 for World of Warcraft so that they could spend $20 more a month just to play. But people do these things. I guess it's about membership and how badly you want in.

Awful WoW analogy. WoW charges its monthly fee because

a) it can
b) server cost and staff maintenance are INSANELY high (in hundreds of thousands per day)
c) new content which is delivered in patches costs money to develop, however we can argue that its content has fallen off in terms of quality
d) its a business

 

[Guest]

Because it's a free upgrade you can only use it on one device, if you upgrade pc your license is gone. However if you buy windows10 you can use it on any device you want(one at a time).

 

[Stupido]

Because it's a free upgrade you can only use it on one device, if you upgrade pc your license is gone. However if you buy windows10 you can use it on any device you want(one at a time).

so this means that if I upgrade now from 8.1 to 10, then my license is locked to this particular computer I have?

by the way, does anyone know to what HW component(s) the license is tied to?
I always upgrade my PC in parts, so I'm curious what HW component is 'untouchable'?

funny part is that I boot in Windows only and only when I game (which gets progressively less)...
nowadays that would be BF4, but I still do sink an hour or two to TF2... and that one runs on Linux flawlessly...

 

[NicktheWVAHick]

My car dealership just informed me that if I upgrade to the 2016 model from my current car anytime this year it will be free for the lifetime of the car. Then my mortgage company called and said that if I upgrade to a 6K sq ft mansion from my mobile home anytime next year it will be free for life. Way to go MS. Your new business model ROCKS!!!

 

[Teko03]

I bet there is still a substantial base of XP users out there - myself included. If M$ really wanted to eliminate this base, they should offer upgrades to XP users for free, too. If I have to pay for this for the machine I have it running on, then all I can say is not gonna happen.

Even with years old hardware except for an SSD upgrade, it is the fastest booting machine that I have that is not built with UEFI.

XP Users is no concern of Microsoft.

1) You're running an EOL operating systems which no longer receive security updates --- you'r only hurting yourself by doing so.
2) Microsoft has offered 3 operating systems since then. It's likely that most XP machines are running on crap hardware. BUY A NEW PC.
3) XP accounts for just 14% of Desktop OS's. Windows 7 has 57% and Windows 8.x has 16%. If it made sense, they'd only offer it to Windows 7 users for free, but you can't ignore Windows 8 users who are on a newer OS. Point is, Windows 10 is focused on getting the 57% of Windows 7 users on Windows 10.

Any one still using XP (an OS released in 2001) clearly isn't that worried about being up to date and secure. If you were, you'd cough up the cash for a new PC or license.

 

[noel24]

My car dealership just informed me that if I upgrade to the 2016 model from my current car anytime this year it will be free for the lifetime of the car. Then my mortgage company called and said that if I upgrade to a 6K sq ft mansion from my mobile home anytime next year it will be free for life. Way to go MS. Your new business model ROCKS!!!

Yeah, but then there's this risk that it comes at certain sacrifices to be made. Like your new 2016 model is the same tech underneath, only now comes in pink and got big hemmoroid ointment ad on the side, and You switch your cosy RV for a cold, dark mansion that You share with 20 marketing department execs that gonna talk their work all the time and block the toilet in the morning.

 

[stillborn]

I was planning to buy it for the first time, but instead of remaining on the agenda with features or performance, its all free or paid bs speculation, hell no, I"ll do everything I can to use it pirated!

 

[deemon]

If the insiders get to upgrade to final RTM for free and later be able to clean install .... then how does the clean installer program to know if this is the insider who is making the free clean install?

 

[Forebode]

I still have questions, if one has a valid Windows 7/8 copy, upgrades to Windows 10 and after a time you format your pc, what will happen then?

"lifetime of the device."
This would imply your 7/8 license gets linked to 10, to allow the upgrade all the time...

 

[Whack Tack]

Why 1 year free upgrade?
Because after that there will be dozen of pirate cracks on the market.

 

[bea108]

I still have questions, if one has a valid Windows 7/8 copy, upgrades to Windows 10 and after a time you format your pc, what will happen then?

Good question; like if your hd dies, what next? Someone needs to explain all these little intricacies. All these articles say the same thing but no one answers questions of formatting later, hardware changes, etc.

 

[bobc4012]

Nothing in life is free. Want the latest "Patch Tuesday" updates to plug up those holes in your OS?.....It'll cost ya...$$$$...

WTF are you talking about. Patches have never and will never cost money. Don't be such a cynical *****.

so if you stop paying your yearly windows sub you will keep getting patches?

& crapple dont give you the OS for free... its in with the system hence why they get nearly 50% profit for everything they sell.. it comes out of that..

Actually, the Apple OS is based on FreeBSD as I understand. But nothing can stop them from setting the price of their H/W (which can be sufficient to cover the cost of installing FreeBSD plus modifications). It is kin to the IBM business model of 45+ years ago. All IBM S/W, the OS, compilers, sorts, utilities, etc. were included with the lease/sale of IBM's H/W until they signed the consent decree back in 1969, which forced them to "unbundle" the S/W from the H/W. The only "free" S/W they could include with the H/W was the OS, the Assembler and any utilities deemed necessary to support the H/W. This also included the source code for the OS (and prior to the unbundling, customers could get the source and modify it).

 

[Guest]

NicktheWVAHick
Nothing in life is free. Want the latest "Patch Tuesday" updates to plug up those holes in your OS?.....It'll cost ya...$$$$...
​

Actually, what you might have failed to take into account with all of this is that their decision to make Windows 10 free for a time, could serve them from a business perspective. In business, it not only comes down to money coming in, aka sales, but also costs. Support costs money. Manning the support lines, and having people to work in a department, means labor, which costs money. Patching additional code bases, means having developers work on more code bases, which means man hours, which means labor, which means additional salaries to pay out.

IF they could convince people to move away from Windows 7, and expire it's support, it could save them money, directly effecting their bottom line. The accounting types could be convinced to "give something away", if they can be showed that the savings would warrant this. If they charge for an upgrade, and people don't buy, then they're left supporting that, and continuing with their current support, meaning paying employees to provide it... Labor, certainly full time labor, with benefits packages doesn't come cheap. And as to the devs, in house testing those updates against more OS version code bases, and doing the actual development, aren't going to be hired for minimum wage, or close to it. They're not flipping burgers here, they're writing/testing computer code. Providing support, costs money which means that if they can reduce the number of products/product generations they have to support, they can cut costs/save money...

Microsoft isn't alone in this either. Amazon offers free shipping with purchases, which while also being price competitive in many areas offers the customer a bargain. But providing free shipping isn't without benefit to them, even if they aren't collecting shipping costs to cover whatever agreement they have with the shipping company, if it means more volume gets shipped, more customers come to them, and they can expand as a business. For the customer, the shipping is in fact free, but providing this wouldn't be without value to the company that can grow/expand, either. In Microsoft's case, if they won't have to man the Windows 7 support lines, they might be able to cut payroll in that regard. Saying nothing in life is free while looking at the customer alone, could tend to neglect the fact that if one isn't going to pull in the sale, but is left with prior agreements on support, it wouldn't all be free for the business either who short of increased revenue in a given offer, might in fact be looking ahead to reaping a longer term SAVINGS.

 

[Guest]

Good question; like if your hd dies, what next? Someone needs to explain all these little intricacies. All these articles say the same thing but no one answers questions of formatting later, hardware changes, etc.

Presumably, you would retain your 7/8 instillation media and CD keys, so on a reinstall on a new hard drive, could continue to enter that as verification for the new install. But what would happen from there, would depend on the activation servers, if they're using activation that is. A hard drive swap wouldn't tend to tell them (at least in the past) that it's a new computer, but a much more common upgrade to CPU and video card, might...

 

[Greg Powell]

Good question; like if your hd dies, what next? Someone needs to explain all these little intricacies. All these articles say the same thing but no one answers questions of formatting later, hardware changes, etc.

Presumably, you would retain your 7/8 instillation media and CD keys, so on a reinstall on a new hard drive, could continue to enter that as verification for the new install. But what would happen from there, would depend on the activation servers, if they're using activation that is. A hard drive swap wouldn't tend to tell them (at least in the past) that it's a new computer, but a much more common upgrade to CPU and video card, might...

OK, I got one for ya.
I have 3 desktops running Win7 family pack (3 pc's using the same key). Now If I upgrade mine to 10 but not the others and have to reinstall one of the others then what? Do I treat the key as a normal win7 key for the others or would I be stuck with nothing but Win10 on the others..

 

[Andras Nagy]

I have a fairly new Lenovo laptop. Why on earth would I risk screwing up my system to test MSFT's newest brainchild? There is no incentive for me!

 

[gingerbill]

Does a shopping mall charge you to enter the building? Does a restaurant charge you to get in the door? Absolutely not.

.

lol , there's always someone coming out with some daft analogy , sorry but everything you typed is nonsense.

I'll probably wait and get 10 when the free upgrade from 7 is about to expire , assuming tech sites have good thing's to say about it. I'm still happy with 7 at the moment.

 

[crashoppe]

1. its never the end of upgrading. 10 will fall to W11 or they're saying that all upgrades from here on out will never require a faster proc, more RAM, etc.
2.free for a year, free forever,,, remember, this is MS we're talking about and its all about the money for obvious reasons.
3. imagine having to upgrade everything as much as we do our p/c's and phones. refrigerator, washer/dryer, coffee pot, toaster and everything else. is this day coming? if there will come a day it will all boil down to renting everything. pay every month for everything,,, WHAT A GREAT IDEA! (for those who collect)

 

[ZEVS1]

So the pirates *cough* (me) will have some form of limited system I take it. I have an XP key laying around somewhere, could I use that to get free W10, or shall I go hunt for some family/work keys for W7/W8 to get the free W10?

Hmm, I wish it was free upgrade for everyone... blargh.

hel, I am still on win 2000. im still thinking about upgrading to xp

 

[Mister_K]

hel, I am still on win 2000. im still thinking about upgrading to xp

Well this is rather a big necro isn't it.

 

[ZEVS1]

Guys if you're wondering I gave away my account if you guys want it (it's not my account tho I'm another person) tell me