The free Windows 10 upgrade offer ends July 29th, 2016

Microsoft will starting charging for Windows 10 starting July 30th, 2016

Written by

Zac Bowden

on Monday, Jun 1st, 2015 at 04:37AM @ZacB_

Not sure whether you want to upgrade to Windows 10 when it launches this July 29th? Well don't worry, you have exactly one year from that date to decide. Microsoft announced back in January that the free upgrade offer will last one year after the launch of Windows 10, meaning July 29th, 2016 is the last day you can upgrade for free.

Once that date passes, you'll have to pay for Windows 10. Nobody wants to pay for Windows 10, right? So make sure you get upgraded before then, otherwise you'll be paying a hefty price for something you could have had for free. Microsoft has confirmed that July 29, 2016 is the last day you can take advantage of the free upgrade offer in their Windows 10 FAQ released earlier today.

If you've already decided on upgrading, you can reserve your copy now via the 'Get Windows 10' app. This will enable pre-loading, meaning when July 29th hits, you will get updated straight away with no download times, making for a super smooth experience.

So, have you reserved your free copy of Windows 10 yet or are you still not sure?

Microsoft backtracks on free Windows 10 update for pirates

People running pirated copies of Windows are going to have to pay — or keep pirating — if they want to update their computers to Windows 10. That may sound painfully obvious, but there's actually been quite a bit of confusion up until now.

The confusion has revolved around Microsoft's offer to give free Windows 10 updates to people running Windows 7 and 8.1. In a statement last March, Windows chief Terry Myerson was reported to have said that the offer would extend to pirated copies, too. Microsoft quickly began issuing vague clarifications, while still implying that there would be a way to upgrade at no cost, even if pirates would be required to pay eventually. Now, we're finally getting a full clarification: there's no free upgrade at all. Pirates just have to pay.

  

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Microsoft is hoping to convert pirated copies to properly licensed ones

Microsoft says that it's planning to run some "very attractive Windows 10 upgrade offers" that will allow people with pirated copies to move to an official version. Specific details of that haven't been announced yet, but that likely won't come until we actually hear about when Windows 10 will arrive. For now, it's still targeted for this summer.

There are a handful of good reasons that Microsoft remains willing to work with pirates. The major one is that they're potential customers, but the other reason is that some customers really may not know — they could have been sold a computer running a pirated copy of Windows without realizing it. On Windows 10, Microsoft says that it will display a watermark on the desktop informing people when they're running a pirated copy, but there don't appear to be major obstacles to using it. In the past, Microsoft has even issued security updates to pirated instances of Windows.