Last chance for free Windows, this week

24th July 2016
Last chance for free Windows,   this week

 Microsoft's Windows 10 free upgrade offer expires on July 29 
July 25 2016: 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 improvements promised in the Anniversary update that is 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 5 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 cost the equivalent of $ 119 ( Rs 8000).  There is a good chance it will migrate future versions to a subscription  model as it has already done with its office suite ( 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 desktop.
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 working day. But once you have upgraded successfully,  go to 'Settings',  select  "Update and Security", then select "Recovery" and then click on the option: Go back to Windows 7"  or Go Back to Windows 8.1"  Select which ever 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.