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When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

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Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#11

Post by gambiting »

smacktoward wrote: post #8
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Microsoft will never end the Windows 10 upgrade offer. They want all Win 7 and 8/8.1 users on Win 10. The advantages of having a device upgrade from 7->10 include the following: - Windows 10 has a more restrictive license. Telemetry sharing and automatic updates cannot be turned off on all Win 10 upgrades. - The shrinking and eventual elimination of Windows 7 devices means fewer older devices to support, fewer patche…

If this is the case, why bother putting the upgrade behind the "assistive technologies users only" fig leaf? It's going to scare away some number of honest people from upgrading. If your goal is to upgrade the maximum number of devices, wouldn't you want to make the upgrade obviously free for everybody?

It already is - if you enter a Windows 7 key during installation of Windows 10 it works without any issues. The only problem is that it's completely non-obvious to the final user, MS is not advertising this anywhere as far as I know.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#12

Post by MichaelGG »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Microsoft will never end the Windows 10 upgrade offer. They want all Win 7 and 8/8.1 users on Win 10. The advantages of having a device upgrade from 7->10 include the following: - Windows 10 has a more restrictive license. Telemetry sharing and automatic updates cannot be turned off on all Win 10 upgrades. - The shrinking and eventual elimination of Windows 7 devices means fewer older devices to support, fewer patche…

Microsoft has established support timelines. They will have to backport fixes and carryout whatever level of support they do regardless of how many people upgrade, because it will never be 100%. More users on Win10 just means a better pitch to app developers about using the latest Store-enabled APIs.

But you're right they want to show improving numbers and then mine users for ads. MS absolutely hates how they let online/mobile/advertising slip out of their grasp due to terrible management. So they're poorly trying to implement the Google model to compensate.

Thing is, they are sucking at it. Let people turn off telemetry, little to lose - unless they want to condition people all they are doing is fomenting anger towards MS. And if you're going to go all in, then have some taste. Fix the store. Stop spamming shit in the start menu. But take a look at XBox with its ad-covered dashboard and we can see MS just does not get it and is doomed to poorly trying to ape others and doing it with zero class.

But hey at least we are getting nicer dev stories from them! I love that enterprises enjoy paying crazy prices for Azure "solutions" as it subsidizes MS investing in dev tech.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#13

Post by MichaelGG »

smacktoward wrote: post #8
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Microsoft will never end the Windows 10 upgrade offer. They want all Win 7 and 8/8.1 users on Win 10. The advantages of having a device upgrade from 7->10 include the following: - Windows 10 has a more restrictive license. Telemetry sharing and automatic updates cannot be turned off on all Win 10 upgrades. - The shrinking and eventual elimination of Windows 7 devices means fewer older devices to support, fewer patche…

If this is the case, why bother putting the upgrade behind the "assistive technologies users only" fig leaf? It's going to scare away some number of honest people from upgrading. If your goal is to upgrade the maximum number of devices, wouldn't you want to make the upgrade obviously free for everybody?

Probably to keep up the illusion of the story that people think it's worth paying for Windows upgrades.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#14

Post by discreditable »

Microsoft never stopped allowing you to activate Windows 7/8 product keys on Windows 10 installation media. I think they've stopped advertising the free upgrades as it was (supposedly) putting a damper on new PC sales[1].

1. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3098044/computers/its-o...

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#15

Post by 15charlimit »

Still can't actually opt out of forced updates (non-critical security at least)? Still can't actually kill the extremely invasive telemetry? Still can't get LTSB/equivalent as an individual user to help resolve the aforementioned issues?

Still not interested.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#16

Post by discreditable »

acqq wrote: post #10
christoph wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange thing is, I didn't realise the regular offered ended and successfully upgraded 4 Windows 8.1 machines in the last month or so without any issue or doing anything regarding "Assistive tech". I just put the Windows 10 ISO from the Microsoft site on a USB, kicked the install off, entered the Windows 8.1 licence key from the OEM sticker on the machine and it happily installed and activated. Not sure if I'm an edg…

If the machines are branded laptops (or branded desktops like Dell or something) this can be an expected behavior: the license key that the Windows 10 licensing code checks and accepts by design could have been stored in the machine. It is still machine and vendor dependent. If you've made any of the machines, e.g. by buying a motherboard or a barebone and then by installing Windows 8.1 yourself, it's a news to me. E…

I did an W10 clean install on a friend's selfbuilt PC using his 8.1 product key. Activated just fine.

OEM BIOS unlocks tend to not work between Windows versions. I've experimented with this a little. My go-to method to upgrade these is to clean install the version that will BIOS unlock, activate it, then upgrade that to Windows 10. After you upgrade, you can clean install Windows 10 on the system and it will activate normally.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#17

Post by amdanil »

15charlimit wrote: post #15

Still can't actually opt out of forced updates (non-critical security at least)? Still can't actually kill the extremely invasive telemetry? Still can't get LTSB/equivalent as an individual user to help resolve the aforementioned issues? Still not interested.

I've got rid of updates and some of the tracking on my Win10 pro by disabling the associated windows services. Other annoying quirks like the OneDrive icon can be removed by editing the registry. I do wish that Microsoft would provide an easier way to do this.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#18

Post by tracker1 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #12
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Microsoft will never end the Windows 10 upgrade offer. They want all Win 7 and 8/8.1 users on Win 10. The advantages of having a device upgrade from 7->10 include the following: - Windows 10 has a more restrictive license. Telemetry sharing and automatic updates cannot be turned off on all Win 10 upgrades. - The shrinking and eventual elimination of Windows 7 devices means fewer older devices to support, fewer patche…

Microsoft has established support timelines. They will have to backport fixes and carryout whatever level of support they do regardless of how many people upgrade, because it will never be 100%. More users on Win10 just means a better pitch to app developers about using the latest Store-enabled APIs. But you're right they want to show improving numbers and then mine users for ads. MS absolutely hates how they let onl…

I don't even mind the telemetry data as some of the in your face passive advertising and additional "features" and apps I could care less about. I finally went linux on my home desktop a few months ago, I was so sick of it. No, I don't want Edge as my main browser. No, wtf is this contacts thing you added in that I can't seem to remove. Can you please get rid of these cards for apps I don't have installed? No, I don't want to install MS-* now..

I mean, just give me a nice OS to work with.. hell, I like Windows 10 fine, if they'd stop shoving adware down the update channel.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#19

Post by H1Supreme »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

Microsoft will never end the Windows 10 upgrade offer. They want all Win 7 and 8/8.1 users on Win 10. The advantages of having a device upgrade from 7->10 include the following: - Windows 10 has a more restrictive license. Telemetry sharing and automatic updates cannot be turned off on all Win 10 upgrades. - The shrinking and eventual elimination of Windows 7 devices means fewer older devices to support, fewer patche…

The Windows 10 PC's in our office are a constant source of headaches. Random errors and crashes all the time. I don't get it. Windows 7 gives us almost zero problems.

My gaming PC will have Win7 until I'm forced to upgrade.

Re: When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer

#20

Post by tracker1 »

amdanil wrote: post #17
15charlimit wrote: post #15

Still can't actually opt out of forced updates (non-critical security at least)? Still can't actually kill the extremely invasive telemetry? Still can't get LTSB/equivalent as an individual user to help resolve the aforementioned issues? Still not interested.

I've got rid of updates and some of the tracking on my Win10 pro by disabling the associated windows services. Other annoying quirks like the OneDrive icon can be removed by editing the registry. I do wish that Microsoft would provide an easier way to do this.

There are a few automated scripts that do this... what was it, 98 lite or something like that back in the day... need something similar for windows 10.
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