Windows 10 Free Upgrade Ends Friday; This Is Your Last Chance to Get It

It would only be fair to say that with launch of Windows 10, Microsoft came firing on all cylinders. The company was so aggressive to increase the adoption rate of its latest offering that it even offered the operating system free to owners of previous Windows versions. However, coming this Friday, this financially lucrative aspect about the upgrade will cease to exist.

Yes, it has been one year since the launch of Windows 10 and starting this Saturday, Microsoft's Windows 10 Home version will cost you $119 (roughly Rs. 8,000).

The Redmond-based company started rolling out Windows 10 on July 29 last year, and made it available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. The operating system currently runs on laptops, PCs, tablets, and Xbox One consoles.

The free upgrade option was only not available for owners of Enterprise edition, which is meant for large businesses.

If you want to know how to get your free upgrade, refer to our Windows 10 installation guide.

One major issue with the upgrade, which was pointed out by several users and raised with such intensity that Microsoft had to eventually address, was that the company had been extremely aggressive in pushing it out.

The prompts to upgrade to the latest Windows version ended up annoying most of the users using earlier versions of Windows. The aggression by the company was to such an extent that Microsoft was reported to be downloading and installing Windows 10 on computers even when the owners had not opted-in for the update themselves.

The company even had to reportedly pay a woman $10,000 as compensation for force installing the Windows 10 update on her PC without her permission, which made her lose some important files.

Regarding the issue, last month, the company's Senior Director for Windows Lisa Gurry said, "We're working really hard to address it. We're working hard to deliver a Windows that everyone will really love."

In August, the company is also expected to start the rollout of its Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which was announced back in March during its annual Build conference. The update will improve the use of stylus with Windows Ink and includes other notable enhancements for its browser Edge. The update will also bring certain improvements to Hello and Cortana.

In May, Microsoft announced that its latest offering in Windows series, Windows 10, was powering 300 million devices around the world.