“Get Windows 10” No More

"Get Windows 10" No More

It’s fair to say that the Microsoft-imposed nightmare of “Get Windows 10” ended a month or so ago for most people. But a new report notes that Microsoft officially put an end to this drama just this week in issuing a new Windows Update that, yes, kills “Get Windows 10” for good.

“The Get Windows 10 application was designed to make the Windows 10 upgrade process easy for existing Windows 7 and 8.1 customers for the one year free upgrade offer which ended July 29th,” a Microsoft statement to Mary Jo Foley notes. “Beginning on September 20th, the Get Windows 10 app and all other updates related to the Windows 10 free upgrade offer will be removed from Windows 7 and 8.1 customer’s devices.”

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Microsoft is accomplishing this digital bit of napalming courtesy of the KB3184143 Windows Update, which replaces a slew of previous Microsoft-issued malware that put this terrible, terrible advertisement in users’ computers against their will. And then dogged them for months, and in some cases actually upgrading to Windows 10 against their will. Yep. It was the best of times.

Recounting the history of “Get Windows 10” makes for some tough reading. So I’ll just summarize it like so: I dubbed this episode Upgradegate, noting that Microsoft’s upgrade deceptions undermined Windows 10. Yes, after far too many months of making “Get Windows 10” even worse, Microsoft finally relented in late June—like 11 months after this campaign started, and just one month before the free upgrade offer ended—and let users turn it off. But the damage—to Microsoft’s and Windows 10’s collective credibility—was done.

On July 30 in Get Windows 10? Now What?, I openly wondered what the end game was for “Get Windows 10”. One of my big questions was about whether Windows 7 and 8.1 product keys would continue to work when clean installing Windows 10 and … go figure, they still work as of this week. And yes, I check every week or so. I’ve got a “You Can No Longer Use a Windows 7/8.1 Product Key to Activate Windows 10” post ready to roll for whenever this ends. (It will.)

Anyway. It’s dead, Jim. Time to look to the future.

 

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