In October, three months after the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft outlined plans to "make it easier" for users to upgrade to its new OS from earlier Windows versions. Until this July, Windows 7 and 8.1 users can get a free upgrade to Windows 10, and in its first months of availability, they were required to "reserve" their upgrade through a simple registration process.
However, the company said in October that it would immediately begin delivering upgrade notifications through Windows Update, marking Windows 10 as an "Optional" update. It added that, from early this year, it would make further changes to that process, switching the upgrade notification from "Optional" status to "Recommended".
As ZDNet"s Mary Jo Foley reports, Microsoft is now introducing those newest changes. A company spokesperson explained:
As we shared in late October on the Windows Blog, we are committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10. We updated the upgrade experience today to help our customers, who previously reserved their upgrade, schedule a time for their upgrade to take place.
As Mary Jo noted, the change in status may result in some users - those with automatic updates enabled - seeing the Windows 10 upgrade process starting itself on their PCs. However, while that process may well commence, the upgrade won"t actually complete without confirmation from the user to proceed.
And as Microsoft explained in October, even if you do proceed with the Windows 10 upgrade, "you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don’t love it."
Microsoft said last month that over 200 million devices are now running Windows 10, and with plans to reach a billion devices within the next couple of years, the company will be eager to continue migrating users of older Windows versions to its new OS as soon as possible.
Source: ZDNet