How will the Windows 10 free upgrade work?

How will the Windows 10 free upgrade during the first year work?

Will it be:
Once you select to upgrade your computer, your "CD key" will be permanently upgraded to Windows 10, which means that if you reformat your computer after the first free year, you will still receive Windows 10 as a update even after the first year because it recongnize that you did apply Windows 10 during the free year?

or will it be: You will have Windows 10 free upgrade during the first year and then so long it survives. If you get a virus, disk failure or have to reformat the computer, you will be back at the old Windows and will not be allowed to later upgrade to Windows 10 because the free offer is expired, despite that you did pick the free offer during the free period?

We don't know how it will work as MS has not given out any details.
You will get a lot of "guesses" on that subject but no one knows for sure.
We are all waiting for more information from MS and the release is still Months away so stay tuned for updates.

Jim

If you get a virus, disk failure or have to reformat the computer, you will be back at the old Windows

If you have to reformat your drive, you won't be back to ANY version of Windows -- the drive will be empty.

The SAFEST thing to do is to create an image backup of your setup after you have everything working right. You can do this for free with Macrium Reflect ... but there are other backup apps that will do the same.

That way, if you have to reload Win10, you can do it from your backup with all apps intact.

Win 7 comes with a Backup/image program at least on The Win 7 Pro 64 Bit. I hope this comes with 10 as well.

Gary said:

Win 7 comes with a Backup/image program at least on The Win 7 Pro 64 Bit. I hope this comes with 10 as well.

Yes it did but the first/last time that I used it, it didn't work!