
When Microsoft Plans to End Its Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer - rbanffy
https://hothardware.com/news/heres-when-microsoft-plans-end-free-windows-10-upgrade-offer
======
AdmiralAsshat
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 patches to backport, etc.

\- People that have paid for their Windows 7 license offer no further revenue
to Microsoft. Microsoft is basically losing money on them, being obliged to
continue supporting a device that paid for its license five years ago. People
on Windows 10, however, provide "value" (as a stand-in for direct revenue) to
Microsoft in the form of analytics and telemetry.

\- People on Windows 10 are inherently more likely to participate in
Microsoft's other, more profitable subscription-based models ala Office 365.

~~~
MichaelGG
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.

~~~
tracker1
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.

~~~
vetinari
> No, wtf is this contacts thing you added in that I can't seem to remove.

HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\People, key
PeopleBand of type Dword, set to 0.

However, normal people should not resort to configuring their system via
registry. This should be normal, disableable feature, if it has to be there at
all.

Do not forget to re-check after earch update.

And yes, I do mind the telemetry data. So do I mind resetting the user
preferences by updates and forced updates too.

~~~
jimbobimbo
"Normal people" are right-clicking the taskbar and clearing "Show People on
the taskbar" checkbox.

Or even more straightforward: Settings -> Personalization -> Taskbar.

------
feintruled
Article synopsis: "When do they plan to end the offer? This article doesn't
know. Probably the end date MS themselves specify. Oh you thought it was over
already? Well did you know that if you need assistive tech, or say you do on
the honor system, you can still get the Win 10 free upgrade? Interesting, eh?"

~~~
christoph
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 edge case with some peculiarity with our hardware vendor,
but was surprised to learn the upgrade window finished sometime ago...

~~~
acqq
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.

EDIT: I'm especially interested in upgrades, not in "clean" installs. Most of
the users don't want to start from the scratch with configuring every program
they use.

~~~
discreditable
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.

------
yakk0
You don't even need to do the trick in this article. According to Paul
Thurrott, you can still activate with a Windows 7 or 8.1 key:
[https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/142616/yes-
can-s...](https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/142616/yes-can-still-
clean-install-windows-10-windows-78-x-key)

~~~
christoph
Ah, I just posted about my experience below on this. I can confirm this worked
for me, with no lies about "Assitive Tech" within the last month with 4
different OEM Windows 8.1 licences.

~~~
gambiting
Yep, I've installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 using a Windows 7 key that has
never been used to upgrade to Windows 10 before just the other week - it all
worked without any issue, the system activated itself fine. No tricks needed.

------
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...](https://www.networkworld.com/article/3098044/computers/its-
official-sorta-windows-10-kneecapped-pc-sales.html)

------
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.

~~~
amdanil
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.

~~~
tracker1
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.

------
Crosseye_Jack
Interestly the US page[0] gives an end date of the end of the year but the GB
page[1] doesn't and the FAQ for the GB page states they "will make a public
announcement before ending the offer".

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/accessibility/windows10upgra...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/accessibility/windows10upgrade)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
gb/accessibility/windows10upgra...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
gb/accessibility/windows10upgrade)

------
return0
I work faster on win7. Why switch

~~~
ReverseCold
They're the same OS, how would you be "faster" on 7?

~~~
return0
when OS doesnt get in the way, and keyboard shortcuts work.

