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Free Windows 10 upgrade ends July 29th.

Any bets on how long it will take until free upgrades resurface under a new name/slant?

I wanna be lazy (plus, I only use the laptop now, am cleaning my stuff, dad and I will probably have to help his parents clean up stuff over the weekend, etc), but eh, maybe I'll plug the desktop back in and upgrade to 10 just in case.

Wouldn't surprise me if they make it free again, but not counting on it...

meerkt wrote:

Any bets on how long it will take until free upgrades resurface under a new name/slant?

I'm kinda torn on what I think they'll do. On one hand, it'll be a somewhat of a PR embarrassment if they don't stick to their guns after talking tough. At the same time, I'm sure they know that giving a "deadline" is a useful strategy for getting a certain number of people to jump (who otherwise wouldn't, or might have waited a considerable amount of time).

If I had to say......I think they'll offer it again, but under a different guise, and in a much more limited fashion. For instance, a free weekend here and there; maybe for a holiday or something.

I just picked up my 1080 today, so time to wipe the OS drive and reinstall. Might as well finally take them up on the offer.... maybe.

The Egg wrote:

giving a "deadline" is a useful strategy for getting a certain number of people to jump

I told a procrastinator friend the deadline was the 26th. He had nearly a year, and go figure, I was up with him on Skype the night of the 26th getting his laptop upgraded. Long story short, he would've missed the deadline anyway since he didn't initiate the upgrade until after midnight on the 26th (90GB SSD was plumb full, we couldn't figure out how to get 8GB freed), but luckily I was responsible and he had a few extra days buffer.

It really makes no sense for Microsoft NOT to continue the free upgrades. Win7/Win8/Win10 all cost the same retail. And clearly MS wants as many machines on Windows 10 as possible. Why cut people off?

DPete27 wrote:

It really makes no sense for Microsoft NOT to continue the free upgrades. Win7/Win8/Win10 all cost the same retail. And clearly MS wants as many machines on Windows 10 as possible. Why cut people off?

"Meh, it'll be free forever, I'll keep putting it off because I can't be bothered."

vs

"It's only free for a limited time, so I better jump on it now! Never know when that'll go away." (Yes, I know the deadline was set from the beginning, but you get the gist.)

I mean, hey, I might upgrade the desktop just in case I want 10 on it later. Been putting that off all this time, even though they did fix some of my concerns with 10 (and I found policy settings for others). And naturally, this is one of those weeks where I'll have a ton of other stuff at the same time...

I still wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly make it free again though (once the year is up), just to catch anyone who didn't make it in time.

still on the fence, my hardware is between 4-7 years old, and I'm not sure how well acad 2015 would work with W10, or some of my other software/drivers!? Might just keep W7 on this old tank until it tanks.

anotherengineer wrote:

still on the fence, my hardware is between 4-7 years old, and I'm not sure how well acad 2015 would work with W10, or some of my other software/drivers!? Might just keep W7 on this old tank until it tanks.

I threw one of the later Win10 betas on an HP dc7700 (that's a Pentium D machine from 2007 for those keeping score, also had Core 2 options), and it ran just fine. Same with the 8000's (Core 2/DDR3).

For the most part, unless you have some oddball hardware, you're probably fine. (Unfortunately, if the Windows Update drivers don't like your machine and you need different ones, it tends to fight tooth and nail, repeatedly, to screw it up. I've even seen the update blocker tool fail on those. That's the one biggie to watch out for.)

Hard to say about Autocad, since they don't officially support it (and CAD stuff tends to have certified hardware/drivers for a reason). Wouldn't be surprised if it works fine though.

the same was with me several times, in the end now i'm using linux