by Jason Snell
Windows 10 will be a free upgrade
This operating-system-upgrades-for-free thing seems to have legs. As Brad Chacos at PCWorld reports:
Kicking off the consumer-focused Windows 10 event in Redmond on Tuesday, Microsoft operating system chief Terry Myerson announced that current users of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 for free for one year after the operating system launches. Once you’ve claimed the upgrade, Microsoft will keep you updated for the supported lifetime of the device.
Microsoft’s event today was full of features, long, and weird. Among the introductions were a set of augmented-reality goggles, or as Nilay Patel of The Verge put it,
Windows Holographic is basically what everyone thought Google Glass actually did.
— nilay patel (@reckless) January 21, 2015
Oh, and also an 84-inch Surface tablet. Seriously.
I’ve got Windows 8.1 installed on my Mac, but every time I try to use it I find it utterly baffling. The changes in Windows 10 look pretty smart on Microsoft’s part, allowing computers to behave like computers rather than weird, half-tablets.