Windows 10 upgrade will cost $119 or more after July 29 – or will it?

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By now you’ve probably read Corporate VP Yusuf Mehdi’s Windows Experience blog announcing Windows 10 Now on 300 Million Active Devices – Free Upgrade
[See the full post at: Windows 10 upgrade will cost $119 or more after July 29 – or will it?]

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Or you can upgrade to Linux for free and end up with a better system. You would think that anybody that reads Woody’s column with all its Windows doom and gloom would want to do the same.

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From what I have read recently, Microsoft will do everything they can to force Windows 10 on us.
That better not happen to me.

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If they start charging $119 for Home and $199 for Pro, they can’t shove it on our PC’s without asking. Who would pay after the fact?? Then we could relax and quit fighting the unasked-for upgrades.

Dream on…..
Their billion-device goal certainly would not be met in two years, as people will continue to use Win7 & 8.
Their competition, Mac and Linux, would still be free.
On iOS and Android devices, people could stop using Cortana/BING (that reports back to MS), the one-thumb keybord (that records your keystrokes for MS use), Office365 (that requires MS login so they can monitor your docs), etc.

Unless they start knowingly wrecking previous versions of Windows with updates like KB3133977.

Unless they keep it free so they can force the numbers up to meet the 1B goal.

My best guess is they can’t afford to charge or they will lose more than they gain.

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Huge learning curve for the average end-user.

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Foley just updated her post with a revised statement from Microsoft that says the free upgrade offer is definitely ending July 29th… I can’t believe they won’t have something else in place to keep some momentum going, even if it’s not free but heavily discounted… Otherwise, they may never hit their iffy 1 billion devices target.

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Who in their right mind is going to pay $119 for an OS that you wont own, wont have any control over, spies on you, and at some point in the future may have changed so much as to be something you no longer like or is incompatable with what you want to do with it, be it software you want to run or peripherals you want to use.

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Betanews.com says the Get Windows 10 nagware is going away too… http://betanews.com/2016/05/05/dont-want-windows-10-good-news-the-nagging-will-end-soon/

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That’s GREAT news.

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Thanks for the heads-up. Oy.

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I’m dreading the day that MS comes out with service pack 2 for Win 7. I’ve read that Service packs include ALL of the updates that they have issued, thereby including the ones I have chosen not to install!

If you don’t get SP2, you get cut off from any further updates, etc. just Win XP with SP3.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Won’t happen. Microsoft’s going to make the process of keeping Win7 up to date as miserable as possible.

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But worth it. I switched years ago and am over the curve. Vista did it for me. Widows will never improve so the sooner you switch the better. The rest of you guys are like the frog in the boiling pot of water.

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Not only a huge learning curve and therefore useless to low-key computer users (I’m guessing, but probably more than 90% of all desktop and laptop users not to mention other devices), but specifically useless to gamers in particular.

That’s primarily in respect of home users, but good luck in getting the average IT department interested in switching from Windows!

Let’s also be honest and admit that many Linux users also run some form of Windows as an alternative OS.

No surprise that the statistics quoted by MS made no mention of the number of free upgraders who rolled back to their previous version.

At least the article seems to resolve the question of whether the switch to a free upgrade offer marked the end of box sales and the introduction of some form of annual licence system. It’s pay through the nose as usual! Mind you, there might still be an additional licence fee on top for updates of course!

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For personal use if it does everything you need, perhaps. I don’t see the corporate world switching from Windows.

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Now a major announcement from Microsoft is hidden away in some obscure blog. The Corporate Vice President, Windows and Devices Group has a blog – holy cr** better bookmark it right now.

As my son would say – he was a willing crash test dummy for Microsoft for 12 months but he is not willing to do it forever.

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I was reading a news item over at TenForums that reported that you can no longer block the store even via group policy in Windows 10 Professional. That should perturb a few people particularly small businesses. Just another legitimate reason to hate on the “new” Microsoft.

I’ve installed Windows 10 Professional (licensed copy) in a Virtualbox guest and continue using Windows 7 Professional as my main machine. However, I’ve been using various linux distros in Virtualbox for a couple of years and they have really grown on me. I’ll probably stick with Windows 7 Pro until 2020, but after that I won’t be “employing” Windows as a service. Don’t care for it at all and going from a Windows fanboy to loathing Microsoft and it’s “Windows as a service”.

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About dang time. No more hiding updates due to the chance they contain nagware.

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Gamers certainly won’t be willing to switch from Windows to Linux. If Linux supported my MMO’s, fine, but I can’t see that happening any time soon.

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Who cares about the price?

Some hours wasted time and / or lost data can lose you FAR more than whatever they may charge for Windows 10 in the future.

Try to rise above the irrational emotional attraction of “free” and think analytically about this…

How much is your time worth?

Your data?

The things your older OS can do (like play things in Media Center, run gadgets, access older devices, allow you to carefully control updates, etc.) had value. Is “free” really attractive if you actually lose functionality?

Do you find great value in Apps? I don’t, but I’m a pretty serious old dinosaur. You might. Weigh that on the positive side of the balance sheet if you do.

And let’s not forget Microsoft’s PROMISE of requiring you to reinstall your OS several times a year. If you don’t use Windows bone stock, unless you’ve written re-tweaker software (I have, I know what’s involved, and it’s NOT trivial), that could take you days to get through! Yeah, how much is THAT time going to be worth? Sure, some folks run their systems badly and have to reinstall now and again anyway; maybe this isn’t a big deal. For those running the same Windows installs since the start, this repeating in-place upgrade policy is most certainly NOT a value-add feature!

On the other hand, should Microsoft finally craft Windows 10 into something that really DOES add real value – and it’s not impossible; they’ve done it before – how much is a couple of hundred dollars to buy a license in 2017 or whenever?

For me, “free” or not, Windows 10 stays solidly a “curiosity” in VMware virtual machines, while my real production systems stay on 8.1 or 7.

-Noel

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I have a tip for people who want to secure the free Windows 10 license, but no yet upgrade. Make a system image, then upgrade to or install a fresh copy of Windows 10 (using your Win7 or Win8 license key) just to get you computer registered (I think a fresh install is the quickest). Then restore the system image of the earlier OS.

Because a Windows 10 license is now tied to your computer, you can upgrade anytime you want for free even after July 29. I have done so on my machine, because I still hope (most of) my issues with Windows 10 will be solved in the months to come (Windows Update being issue #1).

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“By now you’ve probably read Corporate VP Yusuf Mehdi’s Windows Experience blog announcing….”

Woody, I don’t come across these things in my “normal” reading (which does not, it probably does not need to be explained, include frequenting blogs by MS Vice Presidents! 😉 ),
so I am really glad that you point out the major happenings and relevant news here on your AskWoody.com site.

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Microfail can shove Windows 10 where the sun don’t shine. I don’t care if it’s free and they throw in a free tour of their headquarters and shout me a champagne lunch, W10 will NEVER be on my computers.

I’ll stick with Windows 7 and when support ends for that, I’ll probably go Apple.

I’ve had it with Microsoft.

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I’m hoping that will work after July 29. It sure sounds like it should work. But sometimes Microsoft works in mysterious ways, eh?

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never gonna be a Win7 SP2 as it’s way too late for that; MS could have made an SP2 for W7 before Win8 was released but chose not to.

The Win10 release that would come after 7/29/2016 will most likely be the “Redstone” version or Win10 with “Anniversary” update (perhaps v1607).

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I would actually welcome a Service Pack 2, but like Woody said, they aren’t interested in developing one. Windows 7 is old news to Microsoft.

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NVIDIA, ATI, and all the other video card manufacturers would have to be way more involved than they are currently with developing for Linux. That won’t happen unless the market shifts from Windows.

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Noel, you would certainly enjoy Windows 10 with this new “feature” even more than you do now:

Microsoft removes store-blocking from Windows 10 Pro
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36226372

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Businesses running the professional version of Windows 10 can no longer block access to the Windows Store.

Following an update the function is now available only on the more expensive Windows 10 Enterprise version, as well as the Education edition.

Many firms try to prevent staff from downloading additional software as it can cause problems with existing programs and affect productivity.

Microsoft said it had made the change “by design”.

“Windows 10 Enterprise is our offering that provides IT pros with the most granular control over company devices,” the tech giant said in a statement.

“Windows 10 Pro offers a subset of those capabilities and is recommended for small and mid-size businesses looking for some management controls, but not the full suite necessary for IT pros at larger enterprises.”

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There are probably still ways to configure store-blocking like uninstalling the Store application with PowerShell or disabling UAC, however those configurations are not supported and can cause other unexpected side-effects.

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It’s not an obscure blog. It’s the primary source for Windows news.

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If Microsoft announce that the free upgrade offer is ending, and you then ask them if that means that the free upgrade offer is ending, do you really expect them to say something different?

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🙂 🙂

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I expect them to annoy us with the same dialog now asking us to pay, forever.

Or (somehow) worse you can upgrade to a trial version (doesn’t happen by accident anymore than it does now, aka sometimes), but it stops working if you don’t pay.

It’s Microsoft, on its current track. I expect them to kill us all by the end of the next decade.

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