Yesterday, we reported on speculation that Microsoft may have been hedging on its decision to end the free upgrade promotion after it’s year was over, on July 29th, 2016. In a statement supplied to Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote to her that the promotion was “currently slated” to end on the 29th, giving what appeared to Foley and others (including us) some wiggle room.
Microsoft has since clarified their response to her, stating that the initial statement was “incorrect,” and offered a new, more definitive statement:
“The free upgrade promotion is ending on July 29 and we encourage all of our customers to take advantage of it while it is still active.”
So the free upgrade offer is definitively coming to an end. Still we wouldn’t be surprised to see new, similar offers, as Microsoft pushes to attain its goal of 1 billion active installations of Windows 10. But Microsoft has probably enticed as many people as it’s going to with the free offer, and pushing harder for users to upgrade has seen its share of backlash.
For those users who are resisting making the move to Windows 10, our own Zac Bowden reported on some good news yesterday, that the nagging “Get Windows 10” app on earlier versions of Windows will be going away along with the free offer.
As we said in our opinion piece earlier, we encourage you to upgrade to Windows 10 before the deadline, to take advantage of the $119 savings and to gain the benefits of running the most modern and safest operating system available.
