Windows 10 shipped 1 year ago today. That means the offer to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, 8, 8.1 for free is ending. There’s no extensions, no exceptions, this is the end people, consider this your 3rd and final warning. This update is unlike any other, Microsoft have changed the way they’re developing Windows and will now ship updates as required, so if you think you’ll wait for Windows 11, think again.
Windows 10 is a great upgrade on previous versions of Windows, but with computers being among the most personal devices, there’s a lot of opinions out there. Whatever you’ve heard, whatever you think of Windows 10, you need to upgrade today if you plan on upgrading at all. If you decide in a week, if you decide in a year, you will be paying to move to Windows 10, so why would you not take advantage of this today, for free.
If you don’t have an upgrade party today, you’ll be facing a the following prices to upgrade. There is no longer a full and upgrade edition of Windows, there is now just 1 price for each of the editions.
- Windows 10 Home – A$179.00 (current special price A$161.10)
- Windows 10 Pro – A299.00 (current special price A$269.10)
Most users will have seen the Windows 10 Upgrade prompt encouraging them to update over the past few months. If you’ve somehow avoided it, now is the time to bite the bullet. Unlike other versions of Windows, the advice this time is to simply do an upgrade, rather than go through the hassle of a clean install. Microsoft have done a lot of work refining the experience of this updater and while some fringe cases may still hit issues, millions of machines have been successfully upgraded.
Given the upgrade is 3-4GB in size, the upgrade would ordinarily take hours to download, however Microsoft took the opportunity to streamline the upgrade process by pre-downloading the bits to your machine. This should result in an upgrade timeline of somewhere around the hour mark. If you’re coming from Windows 8 or Windows 8.1, your apps should come across, on Windows 7, you may need to install legacy apps, but the Windows Update will let you know before and after the upgrade what it can handle.
To perform the update, head to Microsoft’s Windows 10 upgrade page and follow the instructions to download it for free now. You will download a small setup file and run it, the ‘Windows 10 Update Assistant’ will walk you through the steps, but essentially its a next, next done and wait process.
Alternatively you can check Windows Update or if you are upgrading a number of machines, you can download the ‘Media creation tool’ and create a USB key with the bits to upgrade each PC in your home. If you have any issues with the upgrade, its also a great option to try.
Windows 10 Anniversary Edition
Remember how earlier I told you Windows 10 will continue to be upgraded going forward, well the development of Windows 10 never stopped when they shipped a year ago. Since then a team of beta testers known as #WindowsInsiders have been receiving new builds of Windows 10 with new features and bug fixes. Microsoft are now happy this update is ready for prime time and on August 2nd, it’ll be rolled out to more than millions of Windows 10 PCs across the globe.
It is unfortunate that the update didn’t land before the free upgrade offer ended, as this means people who do update from older editions of Windows to Windows 10, will then be updating again just a couple of days later. There is no option to wait and just upgrade once, unless you’re flushed with money and are planning on paying to update (don’t do this). As a Windows Insider, I’m happy to report the upgrades are pretty painless once you’re on Windows 10. For the most part, the bits download through Windows Update, your PC will schedule a time when you’re not using it to perform the update and reboot itself a couple times during the process. Once done, you’re computer will put itself back to sleep and you’ll wake up to an updated Windows 10. This really is Windows delivered as a service and those of us with Xbox One’s which also now run on Windows 10, will receive updates in the same fashion.