What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

What happens to those free Windows 10 upgrades after July 29, 2016?

Microsoft's ambitious plan to get Windows 10 running on a billion devices within the next few years depends to a large extent on the success of its free upgrade offer.

When the company first announced the terms of that offer last May, it literally included an asterisk and fine print. Those terms have changed slightly over the intervening months, but one element has remained constant: The offer is good first year after the availability of Windows 10.

Here's the actual wording of the offer, as it appears today:

It's free and easy

Upgrade confidently - 100+ million fans have upgraded and are loving it. You'll have a free, full version of Windows 10 -- not a trial or a lite version -- if you complete your upgrade before July 29, 2016.

And this is what currently appears in the fine print at the bottom of that page (emphasis added):

In fact, Microsoft's real goal with this upgrade offer isn't just to get its installed Windows 10 base to a billion dollars. The long-term goal is to help close the books on Windows 7 in an orderly fashion before its extended support commitment ends on January 14, 2020.

Some of those Windows 7 PCs will simply be retired, of course. But what about those that are only a few years old and have more than four years of usable life ahead of them? For Microsoft executives, the prospect that hundreds of millions of PCs will still be running Windows 7 on New Year's Day 2020 has to bring back unpleasant flashbacks of Windows XP's messy end.

Ed Bott sees at least about three possible scenarios playing out when July 29, 2016 rolls around...

Windows 10 at six months: Ready for primetime?

Windows 10 at six months: Ready for primetime?
Windows 10 has been available to the public for six months this week. By the numbers, it's been a hit, with 200 million active users as of the first of the year. Here's Ed Bott's midterm report card.

Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public six months ago this week

The first major feature update found its way to mid-November, almost exactly four months after the initial release. That November update, dubbed version 1511, included some hugely important features for Microsoft's enterprise customers, including greater control over updates and virtual TPM support in Hyper-V virtual machines.

The idea of delivering big feature updates two or three times a year is unprecedented in the history of Windows, which historically has saved those features for "big bang" releases every three years or so.

During the past six months, Microsoft has been delivering cumulative updates every month. That's another major shift in the way Windows 10 works compared to its predecessors.

There's a tendency among casual observers and tech reporters to focus on the consumer experience. That's only natural, of course, because most modern tech reporters are themselves consumers, and they have little or no experience with the challenges that IT pros face in securing and managing computing resources in a business setting.

Yes, the consumer experience is important, but the business story is arguably even more so, and so far it's been mostly ignored in the mainstream press.

As of the beginning of 2016, Microsoft claimed that more than 200 million devices were actively running Windows 10 worldwide, with about 10 percent of that number in enterprise and education.

With that wording, it's time to give Windows 10 a mid-year status report. What's working? What's not? And what's next?

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Anti-malware programs can combat malware in two ways:

They can provide real time protection against installing malware software on a computer. This type of spyware protection works the same way as that of anti-virus protection in that the anti-malware software scans all incoming network data for malware software and blocks any threats it comes across.
Anti-malware software programs can be used solely for detection and removal of malware software that has already been installed onto a computer. This type of anti-malware software scans the contents of the windows registry, operating system files, and installed programs on a computer and will provide a list of any threats found, allowing the user to choose what which files for you to delete or keep, or compare this list to a list of known malware components, removing files which match.
Real-time protection from malware works identically to real-time anti-virus protection: the software scans disk files at download time, and blocks the activity of components known to represent malware. In some cases, it may also intercept attempts to install start-up items or to modify browser settings. Because many malware components are installed as a result of browser exploits or user error, using security software (some of which are anti-malware, though many are not) to "sandbox" browsers (essentially babysit the user and their browser) can even be effective to help restrict any damage done.

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