Microsoft’s About To Become More Aggressive With Windows 10 Upgrades

Microsoft Delivers Free Windows 10 Upgrade in 190 Countries

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Windows 10 to existing Windows users by offering them a free upgrade, an easy registration process and they even changed the out of box experience for Windows 8 to offer a free update to Windows 10. But, the company is about to take another big step in pushing the OS to existing users and it’s likely not going to make the folks who have held off up until now, very happy.

Terry Myerson stated in a blog post, that you can read here, that they are going to move Windows 10 from an ‘optional’ update to a ‘recommended update’ through Windows Update which means that anyone who is set to automatically download recommended updates will receive the new bits. It’s important to note that you will still be prompted to start the install process but if you are short on space on your hard drive, you will want to be proactive to block this download.

For corporate users, this likely should not be an issue as you can block the update using the various tools that Microsoft provides for managing your network, but for those small businesses who do not have these tools, they will need to pay close attention to when Microsoft makes the switch from ‘optional’ to ‘recommended’.

But that’s not the worst of it, if you are a consumer on a metered connection using Windows 7 or 8.1, there is no automated work-round for not getting the update. Microsoft says that you have the option of turning off automatic updates and then manually checking for patches but this is a process is cumbersome for the average user and requires them to keep checking for updates on a regimented basis if they want their machine fully protected.

On the good side of the coin, Microsoft has said that they will be improving the documentation of what has changed within any individual update and they will also be improving scheduling options for when updates are installed

Microsoft recently came under fire for accidently making the optional Windows 10 update checked by default which resulted in some users downloading the OS; the company has corrected that issue.

This change, which will surely speed up the install rate of the OS, will help Microsoft meet its target of having one billion installs of the OS in three years. The company has never been this aggressive with pushing out a new OS and it will be interesting to see how consumers who have not updated to the OS react to the announcement.