It's FREE WINDOWS 10 time: 29 July is D-Day, yells Microsoft Windows 10 will be coughed up by Microsoft on July 29, the company said on Monday morning – and Windows 7 and 8.1 users can reserve their free upgrade right now. Gratis upgrades to Windows 10 are pegged to last for 12 months, as previously announced by Microsoft. That gives you until the end of July 2016 to claim them. Also, …
None? We'll be installing it and getting on with our lives, just like when people got/get Lollipop/iOS7
I'm going to guess you use Linux, switched from Windows and don't see the point in going back, fight the power and all that, unless you want to play anything outside of the 100 or so steam games.
If not then it must be OSX and you are looking for a invite, since you have to use Windows part of the time to do everything one would expect from an OS (bit like Linux), but I thought you'd be all partied out by the "amazing" announcements Apple have made in the last few years.
(I'll soon be publishing my new book entitled "How to alienate 90% of people who comment in Windows related threads in one easy post" (working title))
"And Linux's answer to Lync is?"
That depends, which version of Linux you use, which kernel, are you using "yumm"or "apt-get", do you have the Gnome libraries or not, which compiler subversion, do you know all of the compiler command lien options by heart, do grep, awk, bash or multiple levels of piping make your sweat or smile....
Of course it's command line, yes of course you need beard and adhere to Stallmans Chronicles but believe me it really is fast....and is so much better than the Windows/Mac version....It's all about choice, it's free, as in beer, and we already have 5 people in the Github ( if you count my 2 dogs, the neighbour and my unborn child)
Our distro is amazing......it's far better than Windows, it's called GlyncLinux....and we use a penguin in a Giraffe costume as our mascot... All Linux versions need a mascot, its just so much more coollll...
At home we call it Gerard the Gyrating Giraffe GlyncLinux... and were currently working on a chewing gum sized bootable "shoe" installation....because you never know when a bootable shoe can come in handy for Glyncing to others.
Yes Linux can do anything you want. If it can't someone in sandals will whip up some code to make something that can. Trouble is 'open source' doesn't mean free and for business supportability is just as important as everything else you mentioned.
I love everything tech. Windows works for 60% of what I do. Mac works for 20% of what I do, and when I'm feeling all nerdy I'll boot linux.
Each have plus and negative points. For most people Windows works and does what they need.
I for one won't scoff at a free upgrade.
MS posts, Apple posts they always end up with an OS equivalent of a willy waving contest.
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Not really free. You already paid for it with your Windows 7 or 8 license. Even so, at first glance it seems quite generous of Microsoft not to charge extra for a new version.
However - it's actually a very astute business plan - consumer OS licensing revenue is not as important as it used to be. Microsoft want to get the Windows App Store on your desktop and sell you Office 365, OneDrive, Xbox Music / Video and get you using Cortana (and therefore Bing), etc. etc!
If it gets me a "free" OS upgrade though, then it works for me...
"To be fair I'm pretty sure it's a major deal for Microsoft and shareholders are going to take some convincing."
It really isn't. Consumer OS sales are worth much less than business ones - and most are heavily subsidised OEM versions anyway. Microsoft will likely only need to sell a single Office 365 or OneDrive subscription, a few Windows Store apps, or have you use Bing (even via Cortana) for a few years on each PC to make more money than a home license would have cost...
DX 12 should be supported by most current, and a lot of older DX10/11 cards, as it's basically driver optimisations, rather than hardware changes.
For example, nVidia Fermi chipset upwards will support DX12, that's the GeForce 400 series from 2010.
For AMD it needs GCN, which is HD 7700 onwards (2012).
So anyone who has a reasonably current system, and especially anyone with a 'gaming rig' should benefit.
Personally, I'm on Win 7 64bit, I'm not planning on shifting to Win 10 any time soon.
Anonymous Coward: "Quite - up to 40% performance gain on a PC and up to 20% performance gain on the Xbox One...OpenGL is at least a year behind."
In your dreams! The overall average performance gain is not going to be anything better than 10% to 15%.
And Microsoft was claiming a +100% to +500% improvement...
First games with DirectX 12 support are proof that that is far from the truth and there will be no real reason to use DirectX 12 at all. So no real reason to install the awful Windows 10 aka Windows 8.2 with Metro/ModernUI crap and the fake start menu plagued with Metro.
"In your dreams! The overall average performance gain is not going to be anything better than 10% to 15%."
If you count crappy integrated graphics PCs maybe. For high end hardware, 40% performance gain is realistic.
"And Microsoft was claiming a +100% to +500% improvement..."
Actually it's better than that for many use cases:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2900814/tested-directx-12s-potential-performance-leap-is-insane.html
I'd like to see some clarification on how invasive Win 10 is (Cortana, always connected, MS account, sync to "cloud" etc.) first.
Well if like 8.1 on the phone, here is the bizarre, complex thing...stand by, it's really difficult....You TURN IT OFF.
I know, crazy shit.
Next you'll be telling me Android needs a Google account and iOS needs an Apple ID in order to get all the extra bits, like Apps.
> Lost all faith...
I guess I'm an "off by default" kind of guy who like to add in features if they're useful to me. But if you prefer to eat in restaurants where your food comes with mayo AND tomato ketchup AND HP sauce AND mustard AND custard AND ...
You can always scrape them off the plate after all.
Trolling slightly, hence icon.
After I am convinced it will not wipe the restore partition on my laptop. And then, if I can install a third party firewall and discover that there is still sufficient function left after I stop it talking to Microsoft, I may just keep it long term. My win 7 restore partition will remain until I am convinced that this is not a bait and switch scam.
To be honest the ONLY attraction of this OS is Direct X 12. And curiosity as to how much user data win 10 will actually want to send to Microsoft. I can't see any other benefit (other than it allegedly being a little quicker) to me personally and my usage patterns to warrant a change.
...after a few months, to let everyone else sort out the normal issues.
And when MicroSoft make good on theit threats to though the proverbial "it", at the Walls to see what stick... Stinks so as NOT to upset the Banker Classes? e.g. Patch Tuesday? I'll be sitting here on Window 7 x64 thank you....
You forgot 2K which was also good.
And Vista wasn't rubbish - it just came supplied on a lot of terrible hardware.
Pre SP1, XP was anything but good. I'd say fuckawful, actually. No security by default, firewall turned off, IE6 doing its awful, awful thing.... nope, can't think of a single good thing about XP at release.
Basically, this whole "alternating versions" meme is bullshit.
I also remember all the hassle of 60Hz issues in gaming in the early days of XP. Can't remember what it was exactly but it caused a lot of confusion in the early days.
As mentioned Vista just got burnt through cheapskate OEM suppliers (it'll run just the same as XP with 512MB of ram won't it?) and lazy third party driver development.
Pre SP1, XP was anything but good. I'd say fuckawful, actually. No security by default, firewall turned off, IE6 doing its awful, awful thing
People have such short memories, when IE 6 first came out, it was fucking amazing - when compared to all the different vagaries of IE 5, 5.01, 5.1, 5.2 and 5.5. I swear to god, each one of them required a different hack to get right. Firefox (or as we called it back then, Phoenix), didn't really exist yet apart from a beta that no-one other than us geeks used, and we still had to support Netscape 4.
Early XP was 2k with some extra candy, which was nice as 2k was NT 4 with USB and some candy.
People still used 98 and ME for gods sake. Some perspective before denigrating XP!
2k - Good
XP - Got better with age
Vista - Got shafted by overly broad interpretations of Minimal Hardware OEM's took
7 Actually fits the definition of "Good", MicroSoft never took it anywhere though post SP1... Oh how I'd welcome a simple post SP1 Rollup!
8 & 8.1 - Brain dead from birth
10 - Candy Crush... The death of Patch Tuesday's... The birth of Windows as a Service? What's not to dislike about this already?!
Like most others here I'll be adopting a wait-and-see approach, though even priced at £0 there's nothing that makes me think it would actually be worth the download. Yes, the Start menu is back - but the overall look and feel is still fugly to me. As for the other "highlights" - don't care about Cortana, don't care about Universal Apps, Edge is irrelevant for me - just all seems a bit meh, really...
Maybe I'm just being miserable git on a Monday morning.
Time is money.
Does that mean that time is evil?
Time to take the backup
Which some folk won't bother with because it takes time.
Time to install W10
Time to feed the fish.
Time to find out that it is a POS
Time to clean the tank.
Time to restore the backup
Time to swear like a sailor because you couldn't be bothered to take a backup (see above)
At $150/hour then yes it does become expensive
Is that the going rate these days?!?
Historically, Microsoft have never "deactivated" a license key once you've used it to upgrade. Of course, that doesn't mean they can't do it and it doesn't mean they are incapable of doing something that stupid but in the 20 years since Windows 95, it has never happened yet.
And just for anyone who thinks restoring an image takes too long - incidentally, if you think that you have no business being in this industry -
http://www.howtogeek.com/75496/how-to-reinstall-windows-without-having-to-reactivate/
@dogged
I seem to recall that Microsoft, or the US Government, once disabled the Windows machines owned by whichever wicked government was wickedly ruling Afghanistan in those wicked times.
True, MS are unlikely to bother a private individual who keeps himself inconspicuous, but corporations are another matter.
"Historically, Microsoft have never "deactivated" a license key once you've used it to upgrade."
It's hard to see how they could. You have to be able to restore Windows after wiping the system and your restoration media will be for the previous version. Unless MS want a really big legal scrap from everyone who gets a rootkit in the next few years, you'd have to be able to restore that previous version. If MS then allow you to upgrade again to Win10, even after the first year has elapsed, then that's their decision. My guess is that they will, because that's less painful for them than supporting Win7+8 for the next few years.
Bullseye. In all that I've read and heard so far, this is one of the biggest reasons to be cautious about this.
Good luck with that. Word on the street is that it's a one way trip. Once you upgrade to Windows 10, there is no way back. Your licence key is irreversibly "upgraded" from a Win7 licence to a Win10 licence. Conviently (for Microsoft), there is no way to buy Windows 7 licences any more in retai either.
In other words, you didn't want to buy Metro, so this is a way to force the Metro on you, with no way back...
> Word on the street is that it's a one way trip. Once you upgrade to Windows 10, there is no way back. Your licence key is irreversibly "upgraded" from a Win7 licence to a Win10 licence. Conviently (for Microsoft), there is no way to buy Windows 7 licences any more in retai either.
Word on the street is absolutely, irrevocably, and massively wrong then. Was "word on the street" spread by Bob Vistakin, perhaps?
As others have linked here, Windows 10 actually has an inbuilt system for rolling back to your old OS version. "Word on the street" my arse. Word on Slashdot, maybe.
Yeah, but I can imagine the rush to get it at the start. I can afford to wait a little until the initial rush dies down and the opening bug gambit has at least made itself known.
Just remember; every new version of Windows had problems somewhere. Quite often it was driver issues and non-supported hardware, often it was all the problems of inherited code when you tried to upgrade, sometimes it was software incompatibilities, and we don't quite know about some of the new features that might go boobies up in a fully working environment.
Of course there will always be those that insist on having the code on day 1 - these are important people as they do all the suffering through these problems which the rest of us can then pick up on when we finally get around to doing our upgrades.
What exactly is wrong with 8.1 and please don't tell the start menu.
What sort of IT professional has even used the start menu since one of the XP updates introduced the ability to search it.
Windows Key + first few characters of program name, enter. Boom. Exactly the same in 8.1, 8, 7, XP SP2.
I can't believe in 2015 people are still slowly navigating through a start menu. Painful.
Erm,
<begin snark>
Well, I pin the apps I want to use regularly, in either the start menu or the task bar. I mean who repeatedly searches for the same thing...
</end snark>
Everyone has their own way of doing something, all because you do it one way doesn't mean all other ways are less valid or wrong. Besides if you've been using the start menu since Windows 95...old habits die hard and all that. I was that guy who used to to turn off Aero just to make it 'classic' looking. I don't like change - he sobs rocking in the corner.. :o(. I've got over that now with a lot of love and theorapy.
"Windows Key + first few characters of program name, enter. Boom."
Window Key + "readme" + expand the files results + try to guess without the help of a folder path which of the 28 files is the one I want. Yes, really helpful.
That hierarchical menu Microsoft are so determined to take away is there for when search isn't good enough or when I can't even remember what the thing I'm looking for is called. An option you apparently don't need but that's NO REASON to deprive me of it.
Ok, lets ignore the UI, except for a pointless irritation. To shut down you click the biottom left and then the top right of the screen. Minor, but bad design.
Things I don't like:
Built in backup programme does not allow the restoration of a single file. All or nothing. Yes, I can buy a 3rd party backup, in fact I have.
File Histories. A very nearly good idea, shadowing changes in a way that can be recovered with tools or with an ordinary file exploder. Except it /must/ be on an external drive, you can't even use an extra internal one unless you do some serious chicken-sacrificing.
Folders and libraries. Libraries were a very nearly good idea, but are deprecated in W8.1 and hidden by default (whats that you say Sooty? file Histories uses libraries to decide what to back up, but that is kept a secret? Gosh)
Context-sensitive help has been abandoned. Hundreds of blue links from the minimalist help pages link to web pages that aren't there any more. When I complained I was told to search the online help!
You say you don't want to hear about the start menu, but the TIFKAM philosophy permeated everything but wasn't finished. The control panel is an unholy mess.
There are two versions of IE, two versions of Onenote, etc etc. depending if you start them from the desktop or the TIKKAM start cinerama. They don't share file histories, cookies, bookmarks etc. they barely use the same screen and keyboard.
Printing stops radio playback. Really. In 2015. A mere 60 years after multi-tasking was invented, on a 4-core cpu with more mips than a mainframe.
USB3 never achieves full speed.
The built-in Skype can only be used full screen. In 2015.
I liked Aero.
The OneDrive integration is clumsy and coarsegrained. The oneDriveForBusiness integration is worse.
Accessing app setups via the charms thing on the right still baffles me. They seem to mix app settings and spystem settings.
I like some of the UI improvements in the file exploder, and in general the start menu livetiles are quite clever. Around 10 years ago I could have small areas of the KDE desktop updating from daemons. I find live tiles nostalgic. Pity 99% of apps can't do it.
I have had to replace scanners, printers and software that wouldn't run on it. No bad thing perhaps, except quite a lot of new stuff is worse than whatbI had before. HP. canon.
My new TOMTOM never worked on XP, but is fine on W8.1. The built in camera app works better with my Conrad microscope than the conrad programme. So its not all bad. But most of it drives me to disrraction with a hundred tiny annoyances that I've not mentioned here. It is smug and insufferable even when its wrong!
Does anyone know how the upgrade will be handled? Will it be like a windows update type patch, or can you download the whole OS and install it on another partition to try it all out before you really commit to wiping out a semi decent win7 system?
Apologies for being apparently unwilling to google an answer...
It was possible to capture the Win8 upgrade folder between download and install. You'll probably need to clone the old OS to pass the licence check though. Don't be surprised if your Win7 then becomes unlicensed. Might get away with killing network access on the trial and running in trial mode.
Not sure I wouldn't prefer a subscription model on the theory that at least that way Microsoft will have a strong reason for keeping both costs and changes minimal and robust.
Then again, OSaaS is a terrible idea; it'd be just as easy to drop support ASAP and charge for upgrades, without holding people to ransom over what they already have (though I suppose patches count as bribe fodder also).
I'm sure I could probably go and look this up but is the free upgrade to Windows 10 actually free for ever or does it move you over to a subscription model but with a free first year? I might be imagining it but I thought Microsoft said they were moving to an upgrade forever model for Windows which sounds very much like subscription to me.
Will I still need Classic Shell after the Win10 upgrade? That's the only real question I need answered.
I only upgraded to Win8.1 for ticklessness and SMB3. But the Win7 and Win8/8.1 Start menus/screens are awful, so I want to hear that I can go back to a nice scrolling list.
Of course, I will be disappointed to hear that I can't. So I'll upgrade just because, and still end up using Classic Shell. :(
Win 10 is even more of a departure from the old WinXP Win7 interfaces than Win 8.x, it may have a rectangular area you can invoke from a button in the lower left corner of the screen mimicking the old start menu, but (most of) the rest of the interface has been metro-fied further than it was in Win 8.1
Will I still need Classic Shell after the Win10 upgrade? That's the only real question I need answered.
It really depends on how you want to use your system. Microsoft have returned most of the function and functionality of the start menu to W10 - they just amalgamated TIFKAM into the second column of the menu that was used in XP, Vista and 7 for all the pinned/recently used applications.
However Classic Shell was used for more than just giving you a start menu...
(Reposting here' since the earlier Win 10 story has been closed before anyone could reply)
My ideal plan would be to re-install a fresh version of Win 10 on a shiny new SSD; but taking advantage of the free upgrade from my existing Win 7 license.
Do we know yet if the "free upgrade" will cover this (downloading a full Win 10 ISO and then entering a Win 7 key at some point)? Rather than installing Win7 again onto the SSD just to upgrade it?
According to Paul Thurrott you can use your license key on a clean .ISO install.
AND roll it back to Win7 or 8.n without "deactivating" your earlier license key, despite FUD spread in these very forums.
@dogged: I can see the 'clean install' bit (completely expected since every paid upgrade has allowed this). I don't see mention of downgrading however.
One new thing he let's slip is a Windows Store account is now mandatory for the upgrade - even with a clean install. So a step back from Win8, though we were compelled to have the otherwise useless account to get Win8.1.
Any word on whether or not Win10 will be made available free to Vista users? I don't own Win7 or Win8, and I'm not interested in in-place upgrading my Vista system. I'd like to do a fresh install of Win10. My hardware is new, so shouldn't be any compatibility/horsepower problems. Seems strange to leave out a relatively small population of (loyal?) Windows users that Microsoft is still supporting with OS updates (ie not EOL like XP). Why not encourage people to get off of Vista?
Of course they offered a free upgrade to 7 at the time. Well, that was "free" as in "free rein for computer manufacturers to charge what the hell they liked for install media", so anything up to about £50 or £60 for a DVD from what I can remember, depending on their crookedness. So it would be nice to offer an olive branch to presumably thousands of users who refused to be ripped off quite so royally back then.
My Windows 8.1 machine had an icon in the notification bar this morning, asking me to register my interest - so I did.
The icon didn't go away, But I did hide it.
When W10 does arrive, I will still install Classic Shell to give me the proper menu back (I'm on the Insider program). I am a professional who DOES use the menu.
Alan
W7 borked (by design) recording from the soundcard.
W8 borked many USB sticks and driver dependent devices. e.g. my Q2 radio setup program. Without that I'd have a bricked Q2 after some time as the radio servers change.
Will W10 bork Get_iPlayer and a load of other things that currently still work on W7 like Sansa Clip+ USB port access?
How good will W10's backward compatibility modes be? Questions, questions.
I'll wait till the 364th day and see.
So, this goes out to those who know more about Windows Licensing than I do (that'll probably be the majority of you).
My current 8.1 license is an upgrade on top of a Windows 7 OEM one.
Once I install Windows 10, then change my motherboard, will it still work; considering that its origin story is a Windows 7 OEM license?
My guess it will technically work, because the clean install will only ask for the Windows 8 disc, but it won't be kosher on the licensing front (which is fine by me). Would be nice to have confirmation of that though.
spreading her charms on the telly (background noise). Funny enough, most people (including my 6 and 8 year old kids) are well-aware of what a voice-recognition system can do (not), thanks to that useless apple feature (sari, or something), and a clash between the reality and what they see in the advert is clear even to the young ones. Oh well, they'll get there in the end. I'm not sure I want to live long enough to see those days...
You missed out the fact that the Control Panel (and Spartan/Edge) doesn't work if you are logged in as Administrator. I'm guessing I've just got the wrong kind of leaves, er, administrative account, but I'm only guessing because Windows won't say why it has a problem with this when all previous versions managed fine.
I do part time IT support work for a group of IFAs that due to the systems they use, are still limited to running Windows 7 Pro (the version of Citrix they use doesn't work with 8 or higher) and their IT dept hasn't done anything the past two+ years to fix that. It's annoying as all the laptops have to be encrypted and obviously Windows 8/8.1 Pro has Bitlocker all built in, unlike 7.
Now that all their users will be getting "Hey upgrade to Windows 10!" messages I hope they have gone on full alert.
goning to give it 364 days after July 29th to 'upgrade' to win10
Make sure the bastards have'nt decided on a software as a service model and charge us £100/yr to access our data held on our computers in our properties....
Hmmm that business model reminds me of those cryptolocker malware people.... maybe thats where M$ got the idea from...
(I originally had a question about whether I could go 8.1 Pro to 10 Pro, because this article wasn't very clear about that aspect)
These guys have that info:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-for-free-from-windows-7-or-windows-8-2015-6
I probably won't wait till day 364 to upgrade my laptop, but I won't rush into it either. Cautiously optimistic that they've learned from Windows 8 but others can take point.
p.s. what's with the wording around reserve your copy of Windows 10 bit? are they going to run out? Seems like a fairly transparent ploy to get everyone to upgrade ASAP, possibly quicker than caution warrants.
For proof. Using windows 8.1 continues to be a nightmare.
Copying photos from my iPhone using explorer crashes - this is a well documented problem.
If I change my password at work then the mail app keeps submitting old credentials in the background without telling me causing account to lock out.
Quality of metro or whatever the heck it's called is so bad that I simply don't bother.
Web browser is years behind chrome.
I hate everything about the look and feel - dodgy fonts, gaudy colours, weird sizes and spacing of toolbars.
That is all.
There are two PCs I use a lot, One XP, one 7.
From what I can see 7 is the last Windows OS written for the older experienced user, the person used to menus, to things being in a certain place. But it is still just a step too far (I had to upgrade Paint to a version with menus)
I will admit I detest ribbon menus, I detest icon only menus, What does the frying pan do? What does the combine harvester do?
My XP PC is almost like an old friend. I know where everything is, I can dive in deep and fix things, I can run any software I want. WIth the embedded registry fix it is supported as long as the 7 PC.
There is a 8.x PC at work, no one wants to use it, Nothing is where you expect. It just winds us up.
Anyway I built 2 x 7/Mint PCs last year, Linux was easier to get SSD ready, Mozilla software was easy to make dual usable, shared contents and settings. I learnt enough about Linux to not feel lost.
So I put a little 1/2 Terabyte drive in the XP PC and installed the latest version of Mint, that was pretty easy and it works well. On the Windows side the willitrun .exes from MS just sit there doing nothing.
Anyway XP is quad core, plenty of RAM, 2TB of HDD so I checked the specifications.
There is one thing missing from the CPU is NX support, and this is a recent one, released around the time of Vista.
So looks like that PC will have to stay XP or Linux. But is it right that I would be happy with a new version of Windows which worked like 2000 or XP?
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