Free Upgrade to Windows 10

kiddkasper

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 02 2015

Many will soon find the little

icon in their task trays. The long and short of it is that Microsoft is offering a free upgrade to Windows 10 for anyone that has a "genuine" version of Windows 7 (with SP1) or Windows 8.1 as long as you reserve your copy within the first year.

It won't include things like Windows Media Center and Minesweeper. Also, you'll have to use a 3rd party program to watch DVDs. Getting the upgrade free is a nice deal. But adopting it right out of the gate exposes you to the flaws that have yet to be fixed. Also on Windows 10 Home edition, you don't have an option about updates, they're automatic.

I'm curious as to the communities thoughts on this one.

Edited June 02 2015 by kiddkasper

Rasilek

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 02 2015

I've been running the insider preview for Win 10 Pro for couple months now on my new tower. It's fast, stable and a very nice improvement over Windows 8.1, and they brought the Start Menu back! So that jarring experience of between the desktop and start "screen" that many dislike is now an option that can be turned on or off via "Tablet mode."

I'm not privy on the home edition details, but for a free upgrade I would recommend it when MS finally releases it.

For those who would rather not upgrade however, Windows 7 will be supported with OS updates through 2020 and 8.1 for several more years thereafter.

EDIT: The bugs are there in the preview build, but i've found that MS has been responsive and quick to fix them...the latest build is very well polished.

Unknown Person liked this

Edited June 02 2015 by Rasilek

eazzie79

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 02 2015

Release date has been confirmed as 07/29 and is worldwide.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/windows-10-release-date-announced/1100-6427711/

Unknown Person liked this

Edited June 02 2015 by eazzie79

nivagni

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 02 2015

Ive been running the preview for a while now also, and loving it so far...

I actually find that STO runs faster and smoother than 8.1, also there is a very handy windows game mode built in that lets you record games and take screenshots etc.

If you dont want to upgrade your current system you could simply do a dual boot system...

Unknown Person liked this

GXV3

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 02 2015

aghh its just appeared on my task bar!!

I dunno what to do.. ive only just got this new pc, and im liking windows 8.1... i shall have to research this more

Parker

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 03 2015

Quote by GXV3

aghh its just appeared on my task bar!!

I dunno what to do.. ive only just got this new pc, and im liking windows 8.1... i shall have to research this more

Click on Reserve your upgrade. You don't have to do anything it will do the research for you. It's pretty cool. Go On now! Click it!

If it breaks then use a system restore point and poof done.

Parker

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 03 2015

Quote by kiddkasper

Many will soon find the little icon in their task trays. The long and short of it is that Microsoft is offering a free upgrade to Windows 10 for anyone that has a "genuine" version of Windows 7 (with SP1) or Windows 8.1 as long as you reserve your copy within the first year.

It won't include things like Windows Media Center and Minesweeper. Also, you'll have to use a 3rd party program to watch DVDs. Getting the upgrade free is a nice deal. But adopting it right out of the gate exposes you to the flaws that have yet to be fixed. Also on Windows 10 Home edition, you don't have an option about updates, they're automatic.

I'm curious as to the communities thoughts on this one.

I have Win 8.1 Pro and like it a lot. I am excited for 10 because of the start menu features coming back. I could care less about Media Center as it is kinda Junk anyway I reserved my upgrade :) (at least on this particular machine)

Angelsilhouette

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 08 2015

For those of you using it, how easy is it to find your IP address? Your network SSID? Your WEP? Can you still access MSCONFIG and dictate which programs and services start with Windows? Can you still bring up the task manager and force close problematic programs? Once you've found your IP address, how easy is it to release and renew? Does it still use all of that silly screen swiping and, if so, can you turn on a low memory mode to keep superfluous features like that from using up ram that doesn't need to be used?

(edit: Hiding my rant inside of spoiler tags. >.> )

Sorry for that. >.

2 people liked this

Edited June 08 2015 by Angelsilhouette

Azrael

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 08 2015

Angelsilhouette - I completely agree with your rant :)

I'm tempted to try Windows 10..... but I like Windows 7 too much

2 people liked this

Parker

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 09 2015

The following tags have no closing tag: quote

Sorry for that. >.

Edited June 09 2015 by Parker

Kasandaro

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 09 2015

The following tags have been nested in the wrong order: li, ol

The following tags have no closing tag: li, ol

Unknown Person liked this

Angelsilhouette

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 10 2015

Quote by Kasandaro

I am here for more questions, Angel, if you want to ask.

Thanks so much. ^___^

One more question (prefaced by an anecdote): I was fixing my mom's W8 laptop last night. Somehow it went from being fine, to having its DNS settings changed without my knowledge while I was testing a website for my upcoming interview. Windows ran an update while I was testing and needed to reboot. After the reboot, it only had limited connectivity; it could connect to the router and access the admin panel of the router, but not go beyond.

It's been over a year since I did tech support for this sort of thing so I was having to really dig my brains for my old skills. It didn't help me that the laptop was slow (Suffice it to say that when I try to help her by removing awful memory and clock cycle hogs, she gets upset because she "uses" them) and pumping out a lot of heat and making me hot.
Most of what was frustrating me, though, was the inability to create a new network connection from scratch. I suppose this isn't a big deal for most people, but several of my neighbours and myself hide our SSIDs, and I didn't want to play musical chair guessing games with the various "Hidden Network"s in the list; I just wanted to add a new network and build it from scratch.
Less frustrating was when I finally remembered "Oh yeah, let's go play with the IPV4 settings" I was able to find it with relative ease and see that something had changed the DNS from dynamic to static.

Allllll of that said, how easy is it to create a new network connection? Can you "add" or when you go to manage the connections does it only give you a "Choose which connection to forget" option like Windows 8?
Is finding and accessing the IPV4 properties still easy, or have they obfuscated it within a frustrating labyrinth?

Edited June 10 2015 by Angelsilhouette

Kasandaro

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

June 10 2015

Quote by Angelsilhouette

Allllll of that said, how easy is it to create a new network connection? Can you "add" or when you go to manage the connections does it only give you a "Choose which connection to forget" option like Windows 8?
Is finding and accessing the IPV4 properties still easy, or have they obfuscated it within a frustrating labyrinth?

The full Network & Sharing Center is there under the Settings > N & I > Wi-Fi, or just type "network" in the search box. You then "Set up a new connection > Manually Connect". The IPv4 Property settings are [em]literally[/em] in the same place as in W7.

Honestly, the more I dig around in the Settings, the more I think that they took a lot of W7 and shook some W8 on top of it.

Unknown Person liked this

kiddkasper

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

July 31 2015

If you haven't been notified that you're able to download/install yet, this page has links to the manual installation programs.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/how-to-download-and-install-windows-10-without-using-windows-update/

kiddkasper

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

July 31 2015

Two hours after starting the upgrade process, my dinosaur is on Windows 10 Pro. Not bad Microsoft, not bad at all.

medgirl1025

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

July 31 2015

So I own a copy of Windows 7 which came installed on my pc. It's my since I paid for it and I have a CD. I wonder when I will start seeing that little icon.

williamjaneway

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

August 01 2015

You can use this link to create an offline installation.

You will need a USB drive of 4GB+ or a DVD Writer

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Unknown Person liked this

Edited August 01 2015 by williamjaneway

kiddkasper

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

August 01 2015

Like I said...

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/29/how-to-download-and-install-windows-10-without-using-windows-update/

and you don't need a USB stick, DVD or anything else.

iantimmy123

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

August 01 2015

Quote by medgirl1025

So I own a copy of Windows 7 which came installed on my pc. It's my since I paid for it and I have a CD. I wonder when I will start seeing that little icon.

I just manually downloaded it from the Microsoft Website and installed it from there so I didn't have to wait.

If you're on a Mac, don't make the mistake that I made and uninstall Windows 7 from Parallels first. You have to have Windows installed for the upgrade to work, otherwise it tries to charge you.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

tuvak

Free Upgrade to Windows 10

August 01 2015

I'm debating about upgrading my Win8.1 laptop to Win10 to give it a whirl. It's an old dinosaur that I put 8.1 on because I had an extra license when XP was going end of life. It's an old Dell D630. I wonder if it would even take the upgrade. Guess I better check out the system analyzer thing to see if Win10 will work on it or not. It's surprisingly peppy in Win8.1 and I have it pretty much maxed out. It's like a tank and just won't die.