Last chance for free Windows

Windows 10 will be a year old on July 29 and Microsoft’s offer to legal owners of Windows 7 and 8 to upgrade to Win 10 for free, ends on that day.

They will also be eligible to install the Anniversary Update, scheduled for August 2, and all subsequent updates, for free.

Many of us have been resisting the regular pop-up messages inviting us to install Windows 10, because Windows 7 has worked very well for us, thank you! But in the days remaining, we have to consider a few things:

Unless Microsoft extends the deadline again, which seems unlikely, Windows 10 in its cheapest version will henceforth cost the equivalent of $119 (Rs 8,000). There is a good chance it will migrate future versions to a subscription model as it has already done with its office suite, which is now Office 360. If we don’t move to Windows 10 this week, we may end up, a few years down the road, having to pay Rs 200-300 every month to keep Windows on our desktops.

Windows 7 may be perfectly adequate right now, but remember, it will be supported only till 2020. After that users will experience the hassles that Windows XP suffered after Microsoft pulled the rug from under that one — many applications won’t support it and there will be no way to reinstall it if your machine crashes.

There is one way to have the best of both worlds: Take up the offer of the free upgrade to Windows 10 before the July 29 deadline. It will be a heavy 3 GB download and it could take the best part of a day unless you have reasonably fast Internet. You need to stand by the machine to answer prompts etc. Also, better keep a backup of any important files on an external hard drive or USB drive — in case your PC hangs.

But once you have upgraded successfully, go to ‘Settings’, select “Update and Security”, select “Recovery” and then click on the option: “Go back to Windows 7” or “Go Back to Windows 8.1” — select whichever option takes you back to your original OS. You can go back to Windows 10 for free any time — even a year later, provided you don’t drastically change the configuration of your PC.