Windows 10 Home - The Best Windows yet
Windows 10 is designed to go with you seamlessly from one device to another. It's fast and responsive. You even get free chat or phone support from real people. With Windows 10, it’s easier than ever to do great things.
It just works
Windows 10 combines the Windows you already know and adds great improvements you’ll love. Technologies like InstantGo1 let you boot up and resume quickly. And Windows 10 has more built-in security features than ever to help protect against malicious software.
Multi-doing
Multi-task like a master with the ability to snap four things on the screen at once. Screen getting crowded? Create virtual desktops to get more space and work with just the items you want. Plus, all your notifications and key settings are collected on one easy-to-reach screen.
Microsoft Edge
It’s the all-new browser designed to make the web work the way you do. Write or type directly on webpages and share your mark-ups with others. You’ll like the reading view that clears away distractions. There’s also an improved address bar to help you find things faster.
Continuum
The best screen is always the one you’re on, because Windows 10 optimizes your experience for your activity and device. Onscreen features adapt for easy navigation and apps scale smoothly from the smallest to the largest displays.
Uniquely yours
Your Windows 10 device recognizes you and acknowledges your presence in truly personal ways. With Windows Hello, your device greets you by name and lights up in recognition, waving you through log-in and freeing you from having to remember or type in a password.
Gaming & Xbox
Play your Xbox One games on your Windows 10 PC, laptop, or tablet. Use the Game DVR feature to record your greatest hero moves and send to your friends instantly, without leaving your game.
Cortana
Cortana is your truly personal digital assistant who works across all your Windows 10 devices to help you get things done. By learning more about you over time, Cortana becomes more useful every day, staying transparent and keeping your trust.
How to lock in your free Windows 10 upgrade and keep using your old Windows version??
There is a quetion:"The year-long free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ends on July 29. But what if you're not ready to upgrade yet?"
Here's how to claim your upgrade so it's available at no cost when the time comes.
Microsoft says the year-long offer will expire on July 29, 2016, which is less than two months from today. After that date, unless a new offer of some sort materializes, you'll need to pay for a Windows 10 upgrade at the prevailing retail price, $119 for a Home upgrade or $199 for the Pro edition.
But what if you're not ready to switch to Windows 10 yet? Can you claim your free upgrade and keep using your current Windows version?
Yes, you can. And it's not a loophole, nor does it involve any tricks. It merely involves claiming your entitlement under the free upgrade offer and then rolling back to your prior operating system. With that entitlement in place, you can schedule the final upgrade for when you're ready, even if that's after July 29.
As with anything that involves Windows licensing, Microsoft doesn't go out of its way to explain these nuances of the Windows 10 upgrade offer. I am not a lawyer, and this post should not be considered legal advice. With that disclaimer out of the way, here's what you need to know.
Let's start with two important pieces of fine print, taken from the footnotes on the Windows 10 upgrade offer page.
First, this offer applies to anyone who owns a "qualified and genuine" device running a non-Enterprise edition of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. That includes PCs you purchased with either operating system preinstalled as well as those that you upgraded using a copy of Windows you purchased from a reseller or from Microsoft directly.
Second, the upgrade process uses that underlying license to record a "digital entitlement" on Microsoft's activation servers: "Once you upgrade, you have Windows 10 for free on that device." The point of the digital entitlement is to associate the Windows 10 license with your specific hardware, making a product key unnecessary.
If you look in Settings > Update & security > Activation, you'll see this on a system that's been upgraded this way:
That dialog box is your confirmation that you have successfully recorded your Windows 10 digital entitlement for that device. Here's what I wrote last August about this these new activation rules:
You can also temporarily undo the upgrade and restore the underlying Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 license that you used to qualify the upgrade. That won't affect the digital entitlement you received, which remains safely locked up on Microsoft's activation servers, ready for you to use again when you're ready. How and when you choose to reinstall Windows 10 on that hardware doesn't matter: You can use a USB flash drive or a DVD, a mounted ISO file, or even run Setup from a shared folder on your local network.
If you use the Get Windows 10 tool to install the upgrade, you only have to run Windows 10 long enough to confirm that your license is recorded. As soon as that's done, go to Settings > Update & security > Recovery, where you'll find this option:
Click Go back to Windows 7 (or Windows 8.1, if that's what you're upgrading from) and the rollback process starts immediately. Because of the way the modern Windows setup program works, it's quick and extremely reliable.
The entire previous version is stored in its own folder, untouched. When I tested the rollback process, it took a mere seven minutes to wipe out the Windows 10 upgrade and restore the previous Windows version, completely intact.
If you're a belt-and-suspenders type, you probably want to do a complete image backup before you try this procedure. That way you're covered if anything goes wrong.
But the bottom line is this: If you think you might want to upgrade a PC to Windows 10 at some time in the future, claim that free upgrade now, before July 29 rolls around and the price goes up.
