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When Windows 10 first arrived, nabbing a free upgrade was as simple as clicking the Get Windows 10 notification reveiw. Things are a bit different now, however, основываясь на этих данных with the new free upgrade to Windows 11 frree around.
In other words, Windows 7 is now unsafe to use, making this an excellent time to switch to Windows 10 or, switch to Revoew Unfortunately, the original free upgrade period to Windows 10 ended vmware fusion 6.0.6 free ago, and the workaround to get Windows 10 for free with Assistive Перейти на страницу ended not long after that.
It would be best to have windows 10 home review free valid product key or a digital license to get a free upgrade. When you purchase an operating system from Microsoft or any retailer, it comes with a product key to unlock it. A digital license connects your installed Windows platform windows 10 home review free a key embedded in prebuilt systems from Acer, Dell, HP, and so on. For a long time, these manufacturers printed product keys on labels stuck fre PCs or printed and inserted them into product packaging.
However, Microsoft also moved Windows 7 over to this method. This license becomes locked to your Windows 10 home review free account. Sites like Amazon also keep a record of purchased downloads, but these rarely include the product key itself, though it may help narrow down where it could be. Finally, you can download Windows 10 and perform a clean install.
Despite officially ending the free update promotion in mid, Microsoft quietly keeps this option available so all Windows PC owners revieww run the latest version. Again, unless you have a valid digital license or product key to get a free upgrade, you will be required to pay for a new Windows 10 Home product key.
Disconnect any unnecessary accessories to help reduce the chance of errors. As shown above, you have two options: Upgrade the current PC, or create installation media that will either upgrade another PC or perform a clean install on the current PC.
However, in both cases, the tool will temporarily download a disk image of Windows 10, so be sure you have enough space for the file — around 4GB, at least. Step 5: Select the Upgrade this PC now option and follow the prompts. Step 6: With reviiew issues /28438.txt, the installer will try to port over all the data it can.
Keep in mind, however, the vast gap between Windows 7 freee Windows 10 in terms of the software you fres. Back up or convert any crucial data before you continue.
Step 9: As the installer progresses, your PC will restart a few ho,e. The above method is the best way to get Windows 10 for free — at least windows 10 home review free now. There are other ways you can get Windows 10 if you need it, including free and low-cost options that may be worth exploring. Buy windows 10 home review free copy of Windows 10 from Microsoft.
Please read our guide wnidows how to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows Note that if you're a student, or work at a large organization, you might be eligible for free or discounted Windows.
Microsoft has more on that in a support page. It turns out this is safer than it sounds because Microsoft is pretty lax about enforcing activation. We want to stress that using an unactivated version of Windows 10 is not permitted by Microsoft. Better safe than sorry. In the end, if Microsoft windows 10 home review free to stop people from using these versions, they could do it.
You can find third-party vendors winsows sell Windows 10 manufacturer keys at a bargain. Going through these companies enables you to windows 10 home review free the keys at half or even lower of the full Windows 10 home review free price. While it wwindows sound like a scam, you can find reliable vendors who нажмите чтобы узнать больше happen to have a good price, but you need to stay on your toes.
What customers need to do is hunt for trustworthy key vendors who offer incredible bargains. Easier said than done, though.
But overall, we still suggest shopping winrows. As you can guess, it is very much possible to still upgrade and get Windows 10 for free in You just need to follow our по этому сообщению covered above -- from using your existing Windows 7 or Windows 8. Our tips and tricks are in line with Microsoft's terms, rree. This means you don't have to worry about if it is legal to get Windows 10 for free.
And, if ссылка на продолжение worried wihdows if you can upgrade to Windows 11 if you already got WIndows 10 for free, well, it's just hoome easy and windows 10 home review free. Your upgrade eeview Windows 10 will give you a digital entitlement to Windows, which means if your hardware fits Microsoft's requirements to run Windows 11, you can download Windows 11 at any windows 10 home review free for jome extra cost.
Difficulty Easy. Duration 15 minutes. What You Need Valid product key or digital license Windows account. The iPhone 14 Pro may be more expensive than windows 10 home review free expected. Microsoft claims Sony pays to stop devs from adding content to Xbox Game Pass. VR in a pair of glasses? New research just made it possible. Where to pre-order the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4: best launch deal.
Overwatch is ditching loot boxes ahead of sequel launch.
- You Don’t Need a Product Key to Install and Use Windows 10
Tired interfaces and ancient software plague the operating system used by more than a billion people. This is where Windows 11 comes in. I've been using some version of the OS for the last month or so and spent the past few days with the final product.
Overall, Windows 11 is a step in the right direction. While it won't revolutionize the way you engage with the digital world, this latest release builds upon the foundations of Windows 10 while bringing modern aesthetics and some useful productivity features.
But the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the pane. Some changes are sure to frustrate users, and in terms of new features, there isn't much hiding behind this new coat of paint. Keep in mind that this OS is very much a work in progress. As such, so is this Windows 11 review. We'll update this writeup regularly to keep you up to date on the changes being made to Windows Windows 11 launches on October 5, as a free upgrade to Windows 10 for anyone with a compatible PC see below who want to make the switch.
Microsoft says it won't be until mid before the OS is made available to all eligible computers, but you can skip the line and download Windows 11 manually if you choose. It will also come pre-installed on all new PCs. You don't have to make the switch to Windows 11, even if your system checks all the compatibility boxes. If you decline the option to upgrade, that's OK because Windows 10 currently has an end-of-life date of October 14, That gives it four more years of important feature updates and security patches before Microsoft takes it out to pasture.
By that time, Windows 11 should be a well-oiled machine and you might need to update your hardware anyway.
If you've downloaded Windows 11 but want to revert back to Windows 10, Microsoft gives you 10 days to do so. To even run Windows 11, your PC needs to comply with the recommended system requirements.
Qualcomm processors made for PCs from the Snapdragon onwards will also work. Your display must be at least 9-inches with a p or higher resolution, and your graphics card will need to be compatible with DirectX 12 or later with the WDDM 2. The good news is that this has been a requirement in Windows systems since , so if your Windows laptop was released after that year, you will have TPM 2. You don't need to comb through your specs or try to remember when you purchased your laptop to figure this all out.
Microsoft has released a handy PC Health Check app that will quickly run a check to verify whether your system meets all of the necessary requirements. Microsoft developed its Fluent design language in , creating a vision for the future aesthetic of its operating system.
Under this system, Windows transforms from its rigid origins to a softer OS with rounded corners, transparency, and pops of color. We saw glimpses of it in recent Windows 10 updates, but that was touch-up paint on a fading canvas. Windows 11 feels like a full makeover.
It starts with some gorgeous new wallpapers , though the more attention-grabbing change is the Start Menu located in the center of the Taskbar. Shifting the icons over hasn't impacted my workflow in any measurable way, but I prefer the more symmetrical look.
If you don't, that's OK. Microsoft makes it easy to shift the Start Menu back to the left side of the Taskbar. Press on the Start Menu and up pops your favorite apps except that this time, they aren't in tiles. Yes, Live Tiles — those rotating squares of info introduced in Windows 8 — are dead, replaced by a simple grid of app icons with a uniform gray background. Below those apps is a "Recommended" section showing recently opened files and apps.
As someone who never used the Live Tiles for their intended purpose, I prefer the new setup for its simpler interface, and the recommended section is useful for getting back to a file you might have closed without remembering what folder you put it in.
At the top of the Start Menu is a search blank or you can use the standalone Search tool next to the Start Menu in the Taskbar. As a universal search, it will look both locally on your system and on the web for anything from answers to random questions to the location of files. The feature worked well, showing me a preview of the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles game before taking me to the web.
Unfortunately, this is where the search falters: forcing you to use Edge and Bing. Changing my default search engine in Edge to Google was easy enough but it didn't swap out Bing when using the universal search tool. Sorry Windows users, you're still stuck using Bing. You'll notice a few other changes to the Taskbar. For one, Cortana, Microsoft's voice assistant, is no longer pre-installed and is only available as a separate app.
There is also a Task View icon for virtual desktops and Widgets more on this below along with Teams Chat. Yes, Teams now lives in the Taskbar by default because Microsoft thinks Windows 11 users should be bombarded by its products.
The millions of Windows users who don't use Teams can remove the icon, but they'll need to do so from Settings — there is no simple right-click, unpin option for pre-installed apps. Those who do use the video conferencing software can launch video calls, host chats, or bring up the full Teams app.
I'm sure some will find this convenient, but most Windows 11 users will wonder why something they'll never touch is featured so prominently on the desktop. Fortunately, the File Explorer , where your documents, photos, videos, and downloads are stored, got a new look. The top bar was simplified with a "new folder" option on the left side. Also, icons in the top bar are no longer stacked on top of each other, resulting in a much cleaner interface.
I just wish Microsoft took this opportunity to improve the functionality of the app; moving things around and accessing your files works exactly as it did before. When it comes to making Windows 11 fluent in Fluent, there are a few literacy gaps. Take the Device Manager , where you have to navigate using tiny, low-res icons to see system components. Microsoft didn't think to update the Control Panel , either.
It has the same outdated icons and awkward spacing as before. It gives me the feeling that these aesthetic updates are skin deep — dig too far under the surface and you're bound to find an outdated interface.
To make matters worse, Windows 11 feels less customizable than Windows One inexcusable missing feature is the ability to drag and drop files or apps onto the Taskbar. Instead, you have to right-click, select "Show more options" then "Pin to Taskbar. The Action Center and Notifications features remain in the bottom-right corner of the screen but work differently in Windows Instead of being grouped together, the Action Center stands alone, and is accessible by clicking on a group of icons Wi-Fi, Battery, Volume in the Taskbar.
You can add functions but Microsoft was smart about which ones to include by default. To the right of the Action Center is the Notification pane which shows your personal calendar along with new emails, upcoming meetings and other events.
Oddly, you can't do much to the calendar — right-clicking or double-clicking on a date doesn't let you add an event or reminder as it does in Windows How often do you use the Microsoft Store? Probably nowhere near as often as the iOS and Android app stores.
There's a reason for that. For one, Microsoft's version lacks popular apps, and those it does contain just aren't very good. Microsoft is taking the right steps to make its digital store the type of place you'd actually want to shop in.
The new Microsoft Store for Windows 11 looks fantastic and is more organized than almost any other app store I've used. Apps are organized into categories: Gaming, Entertainment, Productivity and Deals. You may not need to go that far because a handy list of "Essential" apps can be found on the home screen no, they aren't just Microsoft apps.
Windows 11 will also display a small keyboard icon in the taskbar to allow you to touch-type, too. Instead of a lively, reconfigurable Start menu filled with colorful tiles, Windows 11 adopts the rather plain look of Windows 10X, the would-be Chromebook killer that Microsoft canned in May. Microsoft also put a search box at the top of the Start menu, which simply opens up the Search app to the right of the Start icon on the taskbar. It all feels singularly uninspired, dull, and slightly depressing, like a store shelf of prepackaged sandwiches or s architecture.
The Start menu also feels functionally worse than Windows A miniscule pair of dots to the right side of the app drawer is supposed to visually indicate that you can scroll down to find more apps.
Good luck figuring that out! Can you right-click on an app on the Taskbar and pin it to your Start menu? I was at least able to save an Office. Pinning a webpage from Edge almost requires its own tutorial. In Windows 10, the lower right-hand corner of your screen is known as the Action Center, and each little icon is clickable.
As you may have intuited from our discussion of the Taskbar, Notifications and the Action Center are only accessible from the primary or active display. In Windows 10, the Action Center hides all sorts of useful little functions, including VPN options, screen snip, the ability to connect to other screens and devices, and so on.
In Windows 11, this has been pared down considerably, to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth toggles, Airplane mode, a Battery saver mode, Focus assist, and an Accessibility menu. Notifications provide a summary column of alerts that Windows and other apps send: new email, upcoming meetings, and so on. Oddly, in Windows 11 part of this column has now been replaced by a non-functional calendar. Want to add an event to your personal calendar? In Windows 10, a small pane allows you to do this. In Windows 11, that pane is gone, and right-clicking or double-clicking a date does absolutely nothing to what is basically a bit better than wasted space.
To be fair, in Windows 11 notifications seem to be organized far more usefully than within Windows That may be because the calendar reduces the available screen space for notifications, forcing Microsoft to be economical. Yes, it can feel a trifle overwhelming in places as you dig down through layers of menus. A search box to the upper left helps here, with dynamically generated results as you type. If your Windows 11 desktop background is dark, you may see Windows 11 automatically enable Dark Mode.
This is also where the performance slider is hidden, by the way, to get more performance out of Windows Do I really need to download offline maps and manage them? Why is Windows Security still its own separate menu, and not just part of Settings? And yes, the Control Panel still exists, too. Windows 10 launched with helpful assistant Cortana perched next to a dedicated search box designed to search both your PC and the web for whatever you were looking for.
Only the former two search your PC; the latter only searches the Web, using the Bing search engine by default. To its credit, Search does a solid job of listing relevant apps, documents, web results, and more to match your search terms. Search also dynamically searches as you type, which speeds up the process. Nevertheless, it all still feels somewhat incoherent. Microsoft introduced Task View in Windows 10 as a way to shift between arrangements of various windowed apps on laptops and other single-screen devices.
Timeline is somewhat preserved within the shared browser history within Microsoft Edge—if you use Edge—but the lack of Timeline has prompted howls of sorrow from some corners of PCWorld. Chat expects you to manage your personal life via the personal Microsoft Teams experience Microsoft launched earlier this year, via a separate mobile app and now Windows During setup, the app asks you to log in and connect your Microsoft account to any Outlook.
Upon clicking the Chat icon a second time, a list of frequently-accessed contacts appears, with shortcuts to perform chats and make video calls. The transition from the Chat icon to the fuller Teams experience required several seconds to complete, and that experience felt very simplistic and slow. I have concerns on several fronts. Yes, you can remove your email or phone number from your Microsoft account to hide yourself, but why should you?
Why does managing your presence in Teams require downloading the mobile app? Widgets is one of the major new additions within Windows 11, a gargantuan drawer of news and information that slides out from the left-hand-side of the screen at the click of its Taskbar icon. As a journalist and hungry news consumer, I love that I can pop out Widgets, see relevant Windows Start news and information, and review my Outlook calendar, see Windows tips, photos, and more.
I also appreciated the Cortana-powered summary of your day that originally appeared in Windows Microsoft evidently took its News Bar concept and rejiggered it into a quasi-Facebook feed: an endless scroll of celebrity gossip, news, and more. If Microsoft still had its so. Navigating File Explorer in Windows 11 feels like Microsoft ignored what users wanted in favor of what its engineers could add instead.
Microsoft also reworked some of the system icons, so the Pictures and Downloads folder, for example, feel fresh and modern. Icons are one thing. Right-clicking on a file places these UI shortcuts at the top of the menu, where at least I can hover over them. But the option to, say, rename a file only appears there in that row of icons. Or does it? It all feels like Windows 11 was simply tacked on to it all. In Windows 11, you have more options: thin columns, wider columns, and so on.
If you have an additional display or two docked to a Windows 10 laptop, you undoubtedly have your app and file windows arranged just so. After undocking, however, all of that careful organization dissolves into chaos, especially when redocking.
Windows 11 now remembers where those windows live, minimizing them when undocking and then returning them to their proper locations when redocking. Edge runs on the Chromium underpinnings, accepts Chrome plug-ins, and runs smoothly and efficiently.
I often use it as my daily driver, with no regrets. Microsoft makes this vastly more difficult than it needs to. The Microsoft Store app has felt incomplete for years, and the admittedly attractive overhaul of the app does little to change that.
Everything here is more nicely organized, with attractive, dynamically refreshing blurbs at the top of each section: Home, Apps, Gaming, and Movies and TV. It all still feels somewhat lifeless, like a sports arena when no games are being played. That died with Groove. Relegate the music apps to, you know, the Apps tab. Microsoft has detailed some of the proposed changes arriving in the built-in Windows apps in our separate story. The humble Clock app has been revamped to include Focus Sessions, which simply incorporates the Pomodoro Technique: focus intensively on a task for a period of time, then relax briefly, focus again, and so on.
The idea is that you mentally agree to shut down distractions to get the job done. Clock now links to Spotify, for those who like to listen to music while concentrating. Still, this is a good first step. Microsoft is feeling its way forward in a direction many of us can appreciate.
On Oct. Paint, too, lives on within Windows 11, with a redesigned, more intuitive interface. Microsoft also appears to give the revamped Xbox app pride of place during some installations. The piece de resistance is Xbox cloud gaming, which has finally arrived on the Xbox app for Windows. Did you know that Maps has access to traffic cameras, so you can actually look at your commute before you set out? Windows 11 also includes a somewhat improved way of interacting with apps: voice dictation, which has been present in Windows for years but has now steadily improved.
No dictation app is perfect, though Otter. Finally, Microsoft deserves a quick shoutout for the Your Phone app. The only odd aspect to this relationship is that Samsung phones as well as the Surface Duo benefit from a beefed-up Your Phone experience.
Windows has three! You can think about each one as sort of a superset of the others, with Terminal, debuting in , being the most powerful. Terminal, in fact, allows you to create additional tabs in which you can open Command Prompt, PowerShell, or more. Why use a command prompt of any sort? For one thing, there are still commands that can make your life easier. That will take care of much of the nerdy setup in just a single line of code.
In addition to what you can see and interact with in Windows 11, there are also improvements and conveniences Microsoft made under the hood. Some of these could eventually sell Windows 11 all by themselves. Microsoft told users of three ways that performance will improve under Windows 11 : foreground prioritization, sleeping tabs within Edge, and quicker resumption from sleep. Performance can be measured in several ways. In terms of actually running apps, our early performance benchmarks of Windows 11 indicated that there was not an enormous difference from Windows 10, within expectations.
Those observations were in line with what we saw as development continued. Some apps just loaded more slowly than we expected, compared to Windows That flies in the face, somewhat, of what Microsoft calls foreground prioritization, a fancy name for simply giving the apps you want to work on their fair share of CPU and memory resources. Microsoft has previously showed this off by opening Word and Excel while a resource-intensive application was already running in the background.
Sleeping Edge tabs make a difference, too. As you probably know, many browsers preserve a row of tabs while closing them, including Microsoft Edge. In one test I tried, I took my window of 35 tabs, closed it, and restarted Edge. Those 34 tabs required 1.
After clicking on all of them to put them in an active state, they required 4. Implementing this on the PC in some fashion would be a decided plus for PC gaming, especially if we see something similar to Quick Resume. DirectStorage support will be present in Windows 11 at launch, Microsoft has told us.
Games that implement DirectStorage will be compatible with Windows 10 version or later, too. Dynamic Refresh Rate is another Windows 11 feature that utilizes a high-refresh-rate display above 60 Hz for inking. We know that eventually Android apps will be integrated in Windows 11, probably looking quite a bit like the Linux apps running in the Windows Subsystem for Linux and the Android apps in the Your Phone Companion app.
Will Android apps have access to the camera, for example?
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