Page 1 of 2

W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 17:43
by Dr. kitteny berk
Linketh.

Not many details floating about yet, I'd assume it'll be like W10 home, unless you pay for an upgraded license.

No bad thing, either way.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 17:47
by Dog Pants
Unless it's so they can charge you for a subscription model. Which I've heard rumour they might.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 19:41
by TezzRexx
Dog Pants wrote:Unless it's so they can charge you for a subscription model. Which I've heard rumour they might.
They can fuck off with that if it's true, sounds similar to Office 365 and Azure.

I'd happily convert to W7 for free though, but I'd struggle to see what would be in it for M$ if they did that.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 20:04
by Dog Pants
Well on the one hand it was gash rumour, but I heard it from one of our engineers who works regularly with Microsoft staff, one of whom said it was considered. Whether they actually do it or not I don't know, but if they did then offering the base OS for free would be a likely step. And that makes sense from a financial point of view. Windows is so prolific because it's been widely pirated since 3.1, so offering a free or cheap version without support gives them a legitimate way of retaining that coverage, but without all the piracy. Then by charging a subscription for the updates you get a constant income to pay for the constant support, and don't have to worry about people hating the new version because they're paying either way. However, lots of people buy OEM and wouldn't even know how to install Windows, and they're unlikely to pay for a subscription to something they don't even understand. So MS could end up losing out on the up-front payments of millions of home users and never making that back in subs. Not to mention introducing millions of operating systems unto the world which are completely unpatched and full of vulnerabilities.

So it could go either way really. And that's before we even think about the relative or dubious benefits of all the Things they've introduced.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 20:33
by buzzmong
I'm waiting to see the details on the free upgrade. I expect it'll be whatever version of 7/8 to W10 Home or whatever it'll be. If so I'll wait for a while before buying the Professional Edition.

I also half expecting them to do something shitty with the keys like binding them together so you can't use 7/8 again.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 20:40
by Mr. Johnson
If it turns out to be as good as they make it out to be I think I might be eligible for this as I have a UK version. Windows might not work like that but we'll see.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 20:47
by TezzRexx
Dog Pants wrote:So it could go either way really. And that's before we even think about the relative or dubious benefits of all the Things they've introduced.
Well they're due a good one, if they're following the usual Windows quality cycle :P

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 21:08
by buzzmong
To be entirely honest, after using Windows 8.1 at work, it's actually quite good aside from the Tiles gumpf and lack of proper start menu. As an OS it seems quick and stable.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 21:22
by Dog Pants
Is it better enough to warrant paying for it then fannying about to make it look and act like Win 7 again though? I suspect probably not, since Win 7 is doing a pretty good job for me. If Win 10 sucks too though I'm pinning my hopes on SteamOS.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 21:44
by Grimmie
http://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-window ... scription/
Myerson clarified that Windows 10 users will still get free updates and support for the lifetime of the OS, exactly like past versions of Windows (like XP and Windows 7's Service Packs, for example). There's no subscription model for updates or support or continuing to use the OS. Myerson's reference to Windows "as a service" simply meant that Microsoft plans to update the OS with smaller, more regular updates rather than the big, chunky updates of past Service Packs.
You cynics ;)

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 21:54
by Dog Pants
Maybe they just haven't told us what the subscription is for. ;)

The selling point for me would be unification of my devices. If it was the same OS on my desktop, phone and tablet then I'd be tempted to go Win 10 across all of them. If it's just my desktop then that's okay, but it needs to be non-intrusive and at least as good as 7.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 22:21
by TezzRexx
buzzmong wrote:To be entirely honest, after using Windows 8.1 at work, it's actually quite good aside from the Tiles gumpf and lack of proper start menu. As an OS it seems quick and stable.
I can't forgive W8 for ruining Windows Server 2012. Also, the task manager is now shite.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 22:27
by TezzRexx
Also, isn't part of the reason for the shift from W8 straight to W10 is because a lot of legacy software checks if the version of Windows is 9X? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 21st, 2015, 22:45
by Dog Pants
Ooh, the hologoggles look nice! I love the idea of AR, although I suspect that what's shown in the videos is nothing like the user experience.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aThCr0PsyuA[/media]

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 22nd, 2015, 1:25
by FatherJack
It's been rumoured to be free for a while, not been super-interested as it seems like Win8 with a Start Menu (ie: we were wrong to take it away, soz). The XBox app is potentially interesting - sort of like a unified Friends list like GfWL was and it also includes the game-recording feature - however both of those can already be done with Steam and other tools. Cross-platform gaming will apparently be a thing, except that nobody has an XBone and if they did they're not going to be very competitive in shooters on it.

Possibly only free to upgrade in the first year of release, though. Techincal previews have been around for a while, but haven't had third-party driver support thus far, so can't really demonstrate how fast games will run, etc.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: January 22nd, 2015, 12:22
by Joose
Just read that W10 will support streaming from your Xbox to your PC, kinda like steam streaming. It not entirely clear to me if thats official or just rumour, but that would be of significant interest to me. I have all but given up on my console, because the times I want to play games almost entirely overlap with the times Mrs Joose wants to watch the telly, so being able to play on the console away from the telly would, for me, be basically the same as saying "being able to play on the console at all".

I suspect it will be a Xbone only thing, but it would at least take my interest in upgrading the console from "fuck that" to "maaaaybe".

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: April 20th, 2015, 15:54
by Dog Pants
Apparently the AMD CEO let slip on a conference call to J.P. Morgan that Win 10 is coming out at the end of July. And presumably J.P. Morgan immediately ran and blabbed it to the press. She probably assumed everyone had muted themselves and carried on with their work/was playing Minecraft, just like any other conference call.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: April 24th, 2015, 23:31
by TezzRexx
MS Build is this Tuesday which should confirm it, and I attended the Sharepoint Evo conference this past week in London, with some of the MS MVP's alluding to W10 being released sooner rather than later.

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: June 1st, 2015, 16:01
by Dog Pants
I now have a little Win 10 icon in my sys tray which is inviting me to upgrade. Is this wise? Also, I'm likely to be in the market for a Surface next month, but I'd rather get one with native Win 10 on it rather than upgrading from 8.1 (which I'm not that adverse to using on a Surface, but why bother at this point?). Do those of us using 10 think that would be a good combination?

Re: W7 and 8.1 to get free upgrades to W10

Posted: June 1st, 2015, 16:04
by Mr. Johnson
Well, you can't actually upgrade yet, just reserve your upgrade for whatever reason.