Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Quietly Announces End of Last Free Windows 10 Upgrade Offer (zdnet.com)
Ed Bott, writing for ZDNet: If you've been waiting to claim your free Windows 10 upgrade using the "assistive technologies" exception, you need to act soon. In a quiet change to an obscure web page, Microsoft announced this week that those exceptions will end on December 31, 2017. On July 29, 2016, Microsoft officially ended the Get Windows 10 program, which offered free Windows 10 upgrades to anyone currently running a supported earlier version of Windows. But the company left a giant loophole in a separate announcement at the same time. Under the terms of that announcement, individuals who use "assistive technologies" received an automatic extension of the free upgrade offer. Sometime in the past week, Microsoft quietly edited that page, to add "The accessibility upgrade offer expires on December 31, 2017."
I've been popping unopened copies of Windows 7 into machines and upgrading them seamlessly to Windows 10 (usually within 24 hours of original install) for the last year without needing any "assistive technology" tricks. Has anyone actually run into any "you must pay to upgrade" or other barriers since the "free for all" Windows 7 allegedly ended?
Windows 10 is still looking like a "has run" in the OS landscape. It is beginning to look as if the only way the marketshare will be increasing is through the forced bundling with new PC and corporate upgrades due to support issues with older versions, and not because Windows 10 is actually wanted.