Windows 10 Free Upgrade for Personal Machines Ends July 29th

DoIT would like the UMBC community to know that Microsoft's deadline for a free upgrade to Windows 10 is ending on July 29th, 2016. If you are running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and do not take advantage of this offer, the upgrade will cost $119 after.

Please note that this recommendation applies to students, faculty, and staff personal machines. In Summer 2016, all DoIT controlled computer labs will be upgraded to Windows 10 Education. DoIT does officially support Windows 10 and will be happy to upgrade faculty and staff UMBC owned machines as requested. Windows 10 also has support for Eduroam & MATLAB. 

Bryan Roper, Executive Demo Lead for Microsoft, gave 10 reasons why you should upgrade. Roper mentioned that Windows 10 has the highest customer satisfaction rate of any version of Windows ever. 

By upgrading now, you can get live tiles that display tidbits of information without the need to open an app. There are also more games and apps on Windows 10 such as Minecraft, Netflix, and Adobe Photoshop Express. The security of Windows 10 is also improved, and if your device supports a fingerprint reader you can sign into it using Windows Hello

Windows 10 screenshot. Here you can see the live tiles in action, along with a familiar Windows UI. 

The other advantage of upgrading now is you will get all future Windows 10 updates for free. This includes the upcoming summer update titled Anniversary Update which includes improvements to Cortana, Microsoft’s digital personal assistant similar to Apple’s Siri.

You can check out some guides on upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or how to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.