Friday 29 July marks the last day that users can get a free upgrade to the Windows 10 operating system.
Those who do not take advantage of the offer will have to pay for it, with the home edition costing $120 (£91) and the professional edition $200 (£151).
Eligible devices include tablets and PCs running Windows 7 or newer.
This means that anyone, even customers who don't use assistive technologies, can upgrade their operating system for free after July 29, 2016. It is likely that some customers who don't use assistive technologies will take Microsoft up on the offer. Since there is no need to provide proof, anyone may still upgrade to Windows 10 for free for as long as the offer is up and not pulled by Microsoft. http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/29/you-can-still-grab-a-free-windows-10-upgrade-after-july-29-2016/
When you click the Upgrade Now button at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade, you are also agreeing that " Yes, I use assistive technologies and I am ready for my free upgrade to Windows 10." I wonder if the terms and conditions give Microsoft implied consent to collect additional telemetry on how you use assistive technologies on your computer, or if this latest free upgrade offer is just some new marketing ploy to give Win 7 and Win 8.x users "one last chance" to switch to Win 10.
After reading Martin Brinkmann's comments about the changes to the Group Policy Editor in Win 10 Pro I'm not really surprised at anything Microsoft does these days. Woody Leonhard posted a similar article on this GPEdit topic in his InfoWorld blog titled More forced advertising creeps into Windows 10 Pro.
This means that anyone, even customers who don't use assistive technologies, can upgrade their operating system for free after July 29, 2016. It is likely that some customers who don't use assistive technologies will take Microsoft up on the offer. Since there is no need to provide proof, anyone may still upgrade to Windows 10 for free for as long as the offer is up and not pulled by Microsoft.
Even if you decide not to accept the free upgrade to Win 10, there are some helpful hints in Woody's blog entry on how to create a disk image for your current operating system, including a link to Jason Fitzpatrick's How-To Geek article How to create an Image of Your PC Before Upgrading to Windows 10 that has instructions for using Macrium Reflect Free to clone your Windows disk and create rescue media.
Once you upgrade to Win 10 you have 31 days to rollback to your old operating system, but Woody advises that users create a disk image of their old OS just in case something goes wrong with the rollback.
-----------
32-bit Vista Home Premium SP2 * Firefox v47.0.1 * NIS v22.7.0.76 * MBAM Premium v2.2.1