There’s only a day to go before the free upgrade to Windows 10 ends.
After that you’ll have to pay US$119 (UK£99) to get Windows 10.
How to Geek has a useful guide to reserving a free copy of Windows 10 now for use later.
There are various ways to do that including installing Windows 10, then ‘rollback’ to your previous operating system.
All the methods they suggest come down to this … you can register an upgrade to Windows 10. That registration or activation links a Windows 10 licence to a particular computer / hardware configuration. Once that activation is saved on Microsoft’s servers, it will apply in the future. You can install/reinstall Windows 10 on that computer in the future and Microsoft with authorize that as an existing free upgrade.
It’s important that you don’t change the hardware configuration in any significant way after the Windows 10 activation. Any major hardware changes may cause Microsoft’s systems to consider it a different computer and not eligible for the Windows 10 licence. The trick is to make hardware changes (motherboard, video card, hard drives etc) after a permanent Windows 10 installation.
Next week, 2nd August, Windows 10 users will be getting the Anniversary Update which has some welcome changes and improvements. Anniversary Update will be pushed out to Windows 10 computers.
Our Windows 10 for Microsoft Office users has already been revised to cover the Anniversary edition of Windows 10. It includes a chapter on how to prepare for the upgrade to reduce the risk of problems and be able to recover if the upgrade doesn’t happen the way Microsoft says it will! Also, how to delay the Anniversary update until you are ready to switch.
