Windows 10, coming July 29, free to Win7 and 8.1 users | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10, coming July 29, free to Win7 and 8.1 users

microsoft.com

51 pointsaroch31 comments

Maybe I'm just thinking old school here, but I don't see a way to download an ISO / USB image and get a product key. If we want to do a fresh install, anyone have any ideas how that's going to work?

I was going to ask the same thing. I am not 100% but I think I did see an option to do a format type of deal when I got the 8.1 upgrade.

In any event, even though my Windows 8 setup from 2 years ago is running excellent on my Intel SSD drive, I thing Windows 10 will be a big enough upgrade to warrant a fresh install. I already have most of my stuff backed up so it will be just a matter of reinstalling my applications.

FWIW, the upgrade process works very well. If your current setup doesn't have any issues, I wouldn't bother with a full repave.

I've upgraded a half dozen machines from 8.x to 10 throughout the past several months and all of them have gone smoothly. The only real issue I've had is that I needed to reinstall the driver for my ScanSnap scanner after one of the upgrades.

Microsoft has an ISO download site for Windows 7/8 so I assume they'll add 10 when it's released. Also I read somewhere that the Windows upgrade store application has an ISO download option as well.

There have been ISOs of the slow ring preview builds. I'd expect they will be available as usual.

This page is the official one for downloading images. However it seems to be down at the moment. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery

They'll provide USB images, the installer has a way to make bootable media already.

Can't edit my previous comment, but this tool from Microsoft will help you download the right images. https://wudt.codeplex.com/

What is the purpose of reserving your free upgrade? Is there any advantage or is it just some kind of capacity planning tool for Microsoft?

This is surprising. I was expecting a release much later this year. Actually, I just tried installing Windows 10 in a VM using VirtualBox with OS X as my host OS and it hasn't really gone so well. I encountered lots of bugs and instability right from the initial setup and first 15 minutes of use. Right after initial setup, it froze while signing into my MS account (seems to be a common problem) so I took some advice I found online and rebooted skipping this step and opting to use a local account. This worked fine, but upon completing initial setup it flashed the welcome message multiple times "Hi" ... "Unknown User" .... "Hi" .... (I suppose for each of the two accounts it had just created). Then I launched Settings, and then Spartan, and the start menu stopped functioning... :) Really looking forward to this release. I just hope it's stable!

Does anyone know if Windows 10 will support external graphics via thunderbolt like in the vaio Z https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/24/2510531/sony-vaio-series...

And what if I fail to 'reserve' my free copy? Because that's excatly what I intend to do.

I thought that Windows 10 was switching to a subscription model, but I can't find any details on that here. Did they decide to stick with the traditional pricing after all?

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9637292

Good to point that out, although the url is different than the previous discussion.

Microsoft's forum sliding efforts are quite muscular, and serious.

If you check the history of the user who posted this, it is not Microsoft exclusive at all.

Why is there always a comment like this in every MS related story?

I'm skeptical it will work with Mac BootCamp

Yes, you'll want to wait until Apple puts out drivers for it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638084

Hopefully, when they do, it'll support two external Thunderbolt displays on a MacBook Pro.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/171650/boot-camp-on...

Why's that? The public release of the "technical preview" apparently worked fine. Source: ten seconds in Google.

It already works and I'm sure Apple will officially support it soon after launch.

Not exactly BootCamp, but I've been running the preview builds of 10 on Parallels without any trouble.

There was a guy who claimed that Task View even felt faster than Mission Control on a Mac.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2408798/windows-10-...

EDIT: This is the original source: http://www.alexvking.com/12_inch_macbook_and_windows_10.html

Here I thought Microsoft was changing.. Why not make the consumer/developer version free for all and only charge for the enterprise versions.

Is it so hard for them to realize that they can make more money in the long run if people use windows rather than promoting other free alternatives by putting a price on it?

> promoting other free alternatives by putting a price on it?

I mean, it's been working fine for them up till now. The year of Linux desktop still hasn't really happened, people still buy Windows computers. Until the OEMs change, this isn't really going to change at all. If OEMs switched to an alternative, then yes, I could easily see your suggestion being implemented. Until then, however, Microsoft's pricing works fine for new computers, and they are getting current users upgraded free, which would be their other big chunk of userbase.

Not charging money, especially when the current system works, is a piss poor business decision. No sane company would adopt it. If something weren't working, sure, anything can happen.

> Why not make the consumer/developer version free for all and only charge for the enterprise versions.

Probably because Microsoft makes a lot of money licensing the OS to PC and device manufacturers.

Most end-users already don't pay exclusively for Windows -- it's bundled in with the price of the device. What's the purpose of making Windows free if most people, with the hardware to run it, are already entitled to it?

If windows was free for schools, consumers and developers for the last 15 years I think the tech landscape would look much different than it does today in Microsofts favour. Also I dont think that it would affect their revenue that much. If i'm not mistaken most of their revenue comes from enterprise licensing.

Ummm windows even today, own 93% of the desktop market. You think giving it away would have improved on that? The only significant desktop OS that they could have taken share from is OSX where people are paying the same or more.

Microsoft makes money from selling OSs and from selling Office. The suggestion to stop selling OS's for some kinda freemium model, just doesnt make sense.

Consumer products and licensing accounts for 20% to 40% of revenue vs. Enterprise products and licensing. So yes, it would affect revenue pretty significantly.

It's odd that so many people seem to believe Microsoft doesn't make significant money selling their operating system to consumers (via OEMs).

My school (university) was all Windows. Plus, if you were in the CS programs, you had free access to the Microsoft Developer Network which gave us free product keys to XP, Vista, and Windows 7; along with a host of other MS products. On top of that, copies of Windows and MS Office were subsidized for students. Allowing anyone attending the school to purchase copies for under $10.

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