Thursday, June 4, 2015

Microsoft announces release date for Windows 10



MS announces release date for Windows 10
Tracey CapenBy Tracey Capen
It's official: Windows 10 will be formally released on July 29 — but not for everyone.
Microsoft surprised many current Win7 and Win8 users with an on-screen message announcing the event and free upgrades.
Pushing the Win10 upgrade where you live
The message shows up as a new icon on the taskbar. Clicking the icon pops up the Win10 notification. We assumed that everyone had gotten the memo about Microsoft's latest Win10 marketing ploy, but apparently not. A few Windows Secrets readers — along with many others on the Web — wondered whether the icon and its message was legitimate or some sort of sophisticated malware. It's legit.
Microsoft has certainly taken a different tack with the release of Windows 10. Years ago, if you asked MS reps when a new OS would be released, the standard answer was "When it's ready!" But the debacle of Windows 8 and its various updates launched a tidal wave of changes at Microsoft. Among them was a more transparent OS development process — at least by Microsoft's standards (and light-years ahead of Apple's, who might give the NSA lessons in secrecy). As all regular Windows Secrets readers know, we've been able to test preview versions of Windows 10 and give Microsoft our opinions on its development direction. (How much of the Windows Insider feedback was actually implemented is anyone's guess.)
The official release-date announcement was delivered in a June 1 Blogging Windows post. The upgrade is free for those with a "genuine" version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 on PCs and tablets. Anyone who purchases a new Windows 8 system now will be able to upgrade on July 29. (Anyone who installed a version of Win10 Preview via the Windows Insiders program will also be automatically updated to the "final" release.)
Who doesn't get the free upgrade? Corporate users, not surprisingly, who are running Win7/8 Enterprise editions; but Microsoft will also not release a retail version of Windows 10 on July 29. That will come sometime later. Those who build their own PCs will probably have to buy a genuine copy of Windows 8 and then download the Win10 upgrade.
For more details on how the upgrade process will work, see the Windows 10 Q&A page — or one of the thousands of media reports about the July 29 event.
As I quickly discovered, not everyone received the Get Windows 10 icon. Several WS contributors and readers did, but it never showed on any of my Win7 or Win8 machines. I've not seen a good breakdown of who was considered worthy and who wasn't, but apparently the icon was blocked on domain-attached systems such as my work ThinkPad. Moreover, my test system's Windows 8 was downloaded from the MSDN developers site, which might mean it's not considered "genuine." Those and other reasons are outlined in a recent Microsoft Community thread.
How was the icon/popup message pushed onto our systems? It came through Windows Update as KB 3035583, a sort of stealth update whose title states only: "Update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1." That would suggest more popup notifications to come.
Along with the announcement of Win10's release date was an offer to reserve your free Win10 download. Usually, I'd write this off to Microsoft marketing, but there's actually more to the reservation process. According to the aforementioned Win10 Q&A, when you make a reservation, the system will check that your system is compatible with Windows 10. Microsoft will also send updates for Win7 and Win8 systems to make "the final installation go more quickly." Once a reservation is set, you should have a Get Windows 10 app on your machine.
Unfortunately, based on posts in the related MS Community thread, the reservation process isn't going smoothly for everyone. A post notes that the Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser script can take up to 30 minutes to complete. It also states: "If the script is failing in an infinite loop, then you don't have the necessary prerequisite Windows Updates." It goes on to list other Windows updates that must be already installed. (Note: You can turn off the popup notifications by clicking the Show hidden icons triangle on the taskbar and then clicking Customize.)
Taking a cue from past OS X upgrades
Whenever Apple released a new version of OS X, there were many Mac users who jumped on the upgrade and then wished that they hadn't. Often the download servers became overwhelmed and the downloads took hours — or stopped altogether. And there were the infamous flaws that never showed up in the company's quality-control testing. So smart users typically wait for a few days or weeks before installing the new OS X — much as smart Windows users do with nonsecurity updates.
According to the Win10 Q&A mentioned above, anyone who reserves a free copy of Windows 10 will be notified when the upgrade process is about to start. That's well and good, but I don't see any real upside to making a reservation now. The free upgrade offer extends to July 29, 2016. So there's no real hurry. And as I noted in my previous column, there will undoubtedly be many updates to Win10 soon after its release.
But most important, be absolutely sure you have a full and working image of your current system before the Win10 upgrade process begins. I've heard of no official option for rolling back from Win10; but a full image will guarantee that you can fall back to Win7 or Win8.1 if you have problems with the new OS — or you find you simply don't like it.
There are obviously many more questions about the Win10 upgrade process that still need answers. We'll discuss them in future WS stories. But you can also check out MS general manager Gabriel Aul's ongoing tweets.

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