What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

[steven36]

We're exactly six months through Microsoft's unprecedented free upgrade offer for Windows 10. The offer officially expires July 29, 2016, on the one-year anniversary of the new operating system's release. But what happens then? I see three possible scenarios.

 

 

 

 

Microsoft's ambitious plan to get Windows 10 running on a billion devices within the next few years depends to a large extent on the success of its free upgrade offer.

 

When the company first announced the terms of that offer last May, it literally included an asterisk and fine print. Those terms have changed slightly over the intervening months, but one element has remained constant: The offer is good for one year after the availability of Windows 10.

 

Here's the actual wording of the offer, as it appears today:

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It's free and easy

Upgrade confidently - 100+ million fans have upgraded and are loving it. You'll have a free, full version of Windows 10 -- not a trial or a lite version -- if you complete your upgrade before July 29, 2016.

             And this is what currently appears in the fine print at the bottom of that page (emphasis added).

 

 

 

In fact, Microsoft's real goal with this upgrade offer isn't just to get its installed Windows 10 base to a billion. The long-term goal is to help close the books on Windows 7 in an orderly fashion before its extended support commitment ends on January 14, 2020.

 

Some of those Windows 7 PCs will simply be retired, of course. But what about those that are only a few years old and have more than four years of usable life ahead of them? For Microsoft executives, the prospect that hundreds of millions of PCs will still be running Windows 7 on New Year's Day 2020 has to bring back unpleasant flashbacks of Windows XP's messy end.

 

 

I see at least three possible scenarios playing out when July 29, 2016 rolls around.

 

Scenario 1: Microsoft sticks with its deadline and begins charging for Windows 10 upgrades.

 

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There's plenty of precedent for this, based on past behavior. For Windows 7 and 8, Microsoft offered significant introductory discounts and then ended them on schedule after a few months, with no extensions. I suppose that could happen here, too. But does it make sense?

 

Not really.

 

There's no financial reason to pull the plug after one year. Retail upgrades have historically represented a microscopic share of Microsoft's revenue (see the chart in this article), and most customers who might have been willing to pay for an upgrade will have taken advantage of the free offer by then.

 

Asking existing Windows 7 users to pay $99 or more after they've spent a year avoiding the free upgrade seems like a surefire way to guarantee that they never upgrade. That significantly increases the risk of an XP-style mess come 2020.

 

I consider this scenario highly unlikely.

 

 

 

Scenario 2: Microsoft extends the free upgrade offer indefinitely.

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The point of imposing an expiration date is to add some urgency to the upgrade decision. Act now! Don't be shut out!

 

In theory, the company could get to the end of the free upgrade period, declare that the entire program has been an unbridled success, and just extend it.

 

But all that strategy does is provide an excuse for laggards to keep kicking the can down the road for as long as possible. That doesn't align with any of Microsoft's goals, and as a result I consider this scenario also highly unlikely

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scenario 3: A new "free upgrade" offer replaces the current offer.

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Sometime in the first half of 2016, Microsoft plans to ship the next major feature upgrade to Windows 10, codenamed "Redstone." Members of the Windows Insider program are currently testing preview releases of the first Redstone builds, and the release notes for the latest build, 14251, offers a hint that new features will begin arriving very soon:

We're at the beginning of a new development cycle for our next feature update to Windows 10, and that means teams will be checking in lots of new code as they integrate their feature payloads.

In the new "Windows as a Service" model, Microsoft says it plans to deliver two or three new releases each year. So let's assume that Redstone arrives six months after the version 1511 update. That would put its release date in May 2016, which would give Microsoft about two months for one final push to convince holdouts to take advantage of the free upgrade offer before it expires.

 

And then July 29, 2016, rolls around. That's a perfect opportunity to brag about the success of the upgrade offer so far and to say it's been so successful that Microsoft is extending it for a limited time. (Remember, the point of the deadline is to add urgency.)

 

One possible extension date is October 31, 2016. That's when OEM sales of new PCs with Windows 7 Professional officially end.

 

Another possibility? December 31, 2016. New rules for the New Year, and an opportunity to capture upgrades from one last holiday buying season.

 

But the most likely date, as far as I'm concerned, is July 17, 2017. That's the date when Microsoft plans to drop support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 on hardware that's based on the latest generation of Intel CPUs, codenamed Skylake. Aligning those dates would be perfectly in keeping with Microsoft's long-term goals and offer a carrot (free upgrades) to go with the stick (an early end of support) for those customers.

 

After watching Microsoft in action over the past few years, I'm fairly certain that even the top executives haven't yet decided exactly what to do in six months. That decision might not be made until very late, and it certainly won't be communicated to the public anytime soon.

 

 

If someone tries to tell you they know what will happen come that day, don't believe them.

Source

[straycat19]

Hopefully, Microsoft will quit distributing all the crappy nagware and make it go away.  I will  never, ever run windows 10, I don't care what Microsoft does or doesn't do as far as security fixes for 7 and 8.1.  I just bought a laptop with windows 10 and after formatting it I installed Windows 7 and it works fine.  Of course I had to block all the windows updates to keep from getting all the crapware they are trying to foist on users now.

[MidnightDistortions]

It takes just a year to give out a free OS. The fact that W7 still has 4 years left just makes me feel that something bad will happen once MS puts everyone onto W10. This kind of pushy aggressive tactics to get W7 users to upgrade should be in the final year of W7.. not before it's time is up. The nagware doesn't give you the option "remind me when W7 support is about to end, ie: the last year" it's either install now or later no option to say NO. The only way to prevent this is to screen every last update on W7 and don't install the nagware updates. But they're doing the same thing with the W10 updates. They don't care if some update causes PC's to crash which is why i won't even use W10. I'll stick with W7 and Linux.

[vibranium]

This article hits the nail on the head. Agreed 100%.

[Karlston]

Given that the adoption so far has been a failure, 200 million devices said yes, but ~ 1,000 million Windows 7 and 8.1 users have resisted Microsoft's despicable aggression, Microsoft has no choice other than to extend the free upgrade offer and get even more aggressive, if that's possible.

 

There's little option now for Microsoft other than to force it on users, with no choice whatsoever. They could just declare that Windows 7 and 8.1 are no longer supported and will stop working on a given date (30/7/2016?), either upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows will stop working. Nothing would surprise me about this despicable unconscionable company.

 

Unless the media, users, and business start screaming at them to stop, Microsoft will just continue pushing harder to see how far they can go.

[steven36]

Scenario 3 would be torture to me  its just 6mths in and maybe another year and a half of M$ PR ? Redstone will be came and went and i will simply not upgrade windows 10 to a pc  made for a old version of windows.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, Karlston said:

Given that the adoption so far has been a failure, 200 million devices said yes, but ~ 1,000 million Windows 7 and 8.1 users have resisted Microsoft's despicable aggression, Microsoft has no choice other than to extend the free upgrade offer and get even more aggressive, if that's possible.

 

There's little option now for Microsoft other than to force it on users, with no choice whatsoever. They could just declare that Windows 7 and 8.1 are no longer supported and will stop working on a given date (30/7/2016?), either upgrade to Windows 10 or Windows will stop working. Nothing would surprise me about this despicable unconscionable company.

 

Unless the media, users, and business start screaming at them to stop, Microsoft will just continue pushing harder to see how far they can go.

Basically bro what  this article explains  is  Nadella is a pathological liar . Its just like when they said they was sorry for pushing  windows 10 updates on people it was a mistake  then the next week they done it again.  its just like they said  they were going to support  windows 7 and windows 8.1  tell its end of life  but now there only going to do it if you use outdated hardware .  You cant believe nothing Microsoft says heck they have end of support listed  for windows 10 October 14, 2025 that's just 2 years latter than win 8.1.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

So we dont know what they are going do come 30/7/2016

 

[mikie]

From appearances, the way things presently seem headed - if your computer was designed for win7 ... the newer versions of win10 wont install or do so with with extra efforts and some difficulties for too many,  so they probably change the free offer if extending it to win8.1 only.   

 

I don't see how they can actually charge for the win10 if they continue with the advertising in the apps and so called spying for highly detailed logistics/data collection that users dislike so highly.

[Karlston]

Just now, mikie said:

I don't see how they can actually charge for the win10 if they continue with the advertising in the apps and so called spying for highly detailed logistics/data collection that users dislike so highly.

 

Recent history proves that Microsoft will do whatever they want, regardless of what users, media, and businesses think of it.

 

About the only thing they can't do is get anything more than an insignificant smartphone market share. Oh, and... force, bully, nag, trick, bribe convince more than about 1 in 6 Windows 7 and 8.1 users to move to Windows 10.

[Ranma12]

windows 10 would be perfect if they retur to use the old windows update scheme

[steven36]

14 minutes ago, Ranma12 said:

windows 10 would be perfect if they retur to use the old windows update scheme

It would take much more than that

1st they need to remove the spyware

2nd  they need make it compatible  with older hardware  instead just saying it will work OK .

They are a zillion topics of people who had trouble with Win 10 O/S  on old hardware 

3rd  they need  to stop lying to the public .

4th even the old update system has flaws with botched updates . they need to go back to the drawing broad  all together with this one.

[Ranma12]

yeah you right!!!

[steven36]

1 minute ago, Ranma12 said:

yeah you right!!!

I used windows 10 before i uninstalled  all the modern  crap and disable  all the spy stuff and blocked  the rest M$ called out with a firewall . It was not as stable as Windows 8.1  no ways  . My PC  came with windows 8 and only i could find some beta drivers  for windows 10  to use for it . After awhile  i got error INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE it ended up missing my HHD  up . I ended up replacing the HHD  and putting something in that was more easy on my Hardware . I just use windows 8.1 now because by the time you remove and block all the needless crap that comes with Win 10 all you have is Win 8.1  with a start menu .