Have you Upgraded to Windows 10 for free? Free Upgrades ends on the 29 July 2016

The end of Microsoft's windows 10 free upgrade offer is close as stated by Microsoft, the offer expires on the one-year anniversary of  Windows 10 launch which is the July 29, 2016   But what happens after?  

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.

Furthermore, the long-term goal with this upgrade offer isn't just to get its installed Windows 10 base to a billion, but 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.

After nearly a year, Microsoft says a total of 300 million devices are running Windows 10. Many of those, perhaps one-third or more, represent new PCs. Another big chunk represents newer devices originally sold with Windows 8 or 8.1, Windows 10 has succeeded in cutting the share of devices running those versions nearly in half over the past year, and the share of PCs running Windows 8.1 should be in the low single digits by the end of 2017.

But what about Windows 7? As measured by the U.S. Government's Digital Analytics Program, the percentage of Windows PCs running that version has dropped significantly in the past year, going from 71.1 percent in the first quarter of 2015, before the release of Windows 10, to less than 60 percent at the end of May 2016.

Here's the summary:

• The free upgrade offer ends on July 29 and will not be extended.
• Any upgrades completed before that date will be valid for as long as the device lasts.
• There is a possibility that Microsoft will introduce some new upgrade offers after July 29, but don't count on it.

Hardware requirements for Windows 10 free upgrade:

• Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster.
• RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
• Free hard disk space: 16 GB.
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver.
• A Microsoft account and Internet access.

If your device is equal or better than the listed specifications then move on to upgrade to windows 10 for free. Follow the link to download the Window 10 Upgrade Installer.

Windows 10 free upgrade page

when you are done, Accept the licence agreement and move on to the next

if your hardware meets the upgrade minimum requirement then it should move to this page

The upgrade is about 3.5Gb  or more, the update software can resume even after cancellation and could take 10 mins to 3 hours depending on your bandwidth to complete.

If you upgraded an OEM device to Windows 10 for free then you can still reinstall Windows 10 on it for the lifetime of the device since that license can not be legally transferred to other hardware anyway.  If you upgraded a retail version of Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 then after 29 July 2016 you will be unable to fully move that Windows 10 upgrade to a new device using the Windows 7 or 8.1 retail license.

User has a retail license for Windows 7 or 8.1 (full or upgrade version). This would have been purchased in a physical store or online. User will either have a digital download or a physical DVD along with a product key.

This license was used to upgrade a previous version of Windows on OEM hardware or was installed on a home built system as a clean install or through an upgrade to a previous retail copy of Windows.

This genuine Windows 7 or 8.1 system was then upgraded anytime between 29 July 2015 and 29 July 2016 to Windows 10 using the free upgrade offer from Microsoft.

This system, once it is activated through the upgrade process from Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10, will have a Digital Entitlement for Windows 10. That means Windows 10 can be clean installed on that device in the future and remain activated.

Since the underlying license for the Windows 10 upgrade, a retail license for Windows 7 or 8.1, is retail that means the license can be moved to another system. The key is that the old system, which was upgraded to Windows 10 at no cost based on that underlying retail OS license, would no longer be a genuine system if that license is moved to another device.

The user in turn would have to reinstall the genuine licensed version of Windows 7/8.1 and then perform the Windows 10 upgrade in order to gain a Digital Entitlement on the new system.

All legal and straight forward unless it is after 29 July 2016 because that is the date the free upgrade offer for Windows 10 expires. After that date you can still move your underlying retail license for Windows 7/8.1 because that is permitted as mentioned above but there will not be a free upgrade to Windows 10 at this point since it has expired.

For those who fail to upgrade free after 29 July 2016 will have to shell out $119 to upgrade to windows 10 Home (or to put it on a new device).



Sources: zdnet, engadget, microsoft, winsupersite