Windows 10 free to get for win7 and win8.1

banger · 22 Jan 2015

good news

netuser · 22 Jan 2015

Amazing news :) is this official ?

Jesse Williams · 22 Jan 2015

It is our intent that most of these devices will qualify, but some hardware/software requirements apply and feature availability may vary by device. Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled. ISP fees may apply. Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 Update required. Some editions are excluded: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and Windows RT/RT 8.1. Active Software Assurance customers in volume licensing have the benefit to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise outside of this offer. We will be sharing more information and additional offer terms in coming months.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or fasterRAM: 1 gigabyte (GB)
Free hard disk space: 16 GB
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
A Microsoft account and Internet access

From rcpmag.com

Jesse Williams · 22 Jan 2015

Jesse Williams said:

It is our intent that most of these devices will qualify, but some hardware/software requirements apply and feature availability may vary by device. Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled. ISP fees may apply. Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 Update required. Some editions are excluded: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and Windows RT/RT 8.1. Active Software Assurance customers in volume licensing have the benefit to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise outside of this offer. We will be sharing more information and additional offer terms in coming months.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or fasterRAM: 1 gigabyte (GB)
Free hard disk space: 16 GB
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
A Microsoft account and Internet access

From rcpmag.com

What does that mean?

Trust_No1 · 22 Jan 2015

z3r010 said:

Yes, but you shouldn't still be on 8 now anyway.

alphanumeric said:

There are few users that can't get there from here. The Store upgrade fails or they don't meet the hardware requirements for 8.1. Now that 8.1 Media is available, Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help some should be able to do a clean install to get there. I'm not sure what you'd do if you have one of those unsupported CPU's that will run 8 but not 8.1? It likely won't support 10 either?

Well, I am still running 8 on two machines;

the first a tablet with an AC wifi adapter which would not function properly under 8.1 but does under 8.0
the other an
Acer desktop with i3 CPU tried to upgrade and it simply would not do it, I finally gave up.

Besides if they are giving windows 7 and 8.1 people free updates why wouldn't 8.0 be included?
That just makes no sense to me

what I am also wondering,

if a person does upgrade will it destroy the factory re-install options on the machines?
do you use your previous keys if you re-install (even after a year)?
i have Pro are there different versions of 10?
what does free updates for the life of the device mean?

does it mean until my machine blows up or

they may stop creating updates but you can re-install them forever and

is there a difference between update and upgrade

I am still confused by their wording and explanations

Jesse Williams · 23 Jan 2015

Trust_No1 said:

alphanumeric said:

There are few users that can't get there from here. The Store upgrade fails or they don't meet the hardware requirements for 8.1. Now that 8.1 Media is available, Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help some should be able to do a clean install to get there. I'm not sure what you'd do if you have one of those unsupported CPU's that will run 8 but not 8.1? It likely won't support 10 either?

Well, I am still running 8 on two machines;

the first a tablet with an AC wifi adapter which would not function properly under 8.1 but does under 8.0
the other an
Acer desktop with i3 CPU tried to upgrade and it simply would not do it, I finally gave up.

Besides if they are giving windows 7 and 8.1 people free updates why wouldn't 8.0 be included?
That just makes no sense to me

what I am also wondering,

if a person does upgrade will it destroy the factory re-install options on the machines?
do you use your previous keys if you re-install (even after a year)?
i have Pro are there different version?
what does free updates for the life of the device mean?

does it mean until my machine blows up or

they may stop creating updates but you can re-install them forever and

is there a difference between update and upgrade

I am still confused by their wording and explanations

4.) It probably means that they will keep your device up to date and as current with all of the latest security and feature updates for as long as your device lasts or is working.

Superfly · 23 Jan 2015

I'm hoping it will be like the Win8 upgrade offer, but instead of paying $14.99, it's $0.

That means a downloadable iso and upgrade key. Happy days.

To qualify one has to produce proof (not sure if the upgrade assistant will read the firmware key on Win8) - but we will have to enter our COA key for Win7 like we did before, I suppose.

Just putting it out there, makes sense?

PS: As I posted at EF, I got a feeling the base edition (Win8.1 with Bing) may be excluded as with Win7 Starter back then. I guess that's where the "software requirements" come in.

Slartybart · 23 Jan 2015

netuser said:

Amazing news :) is this official ?

Yes, it is official.
Win10 will be a FREE upgrade for Win7 and Win8.1 users.
This is a limited time offer: RTM +1 year
There will be no charges for the life of the device (i.e. no update costs, no subscription plans for Win10)

After the 1 year offer expires MS will charge for updating to Win10

There will be charges for other services such as cloud space on OneDrive, Store Apps, Skype credits, O365 - these charges already occur and will continue in the same fashion... These charges do not apply to Win10, they apply only to other service offerings.

MS has been giving us a lot of Free stuff for a while:
Free Skype
Free eMail clients
Free Cloud storage with OneDrive
Free Applications (Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Media Player, Media Center, Office Online).
Free System tools (Sysinternals, WAIK, ...)

There are certainly more, but that's a lot of development time and money.

They have been very generous for many years. Of course all that free stuff was to sell and support their flagship product, Windows. Now they're giving Windows away, even if it is a limited offer.

The reasoning is still the same - to drive revenue.

Vladimir · 23 Jan 2015

Yes, it is official.
Win10 will be a FREE upgrade for Win7 and Win8.1 users.
This is a limited time offer: RTM +1 year
There will be no charges for the life of the device (i.e. no update costs, no subscription plans for Win10)

I'm so happy with that confirmation !

markweatherill · 26 Jan 2015

They don't mention XP or Vista users!