Microsoft Will Stop Pestering You About Win 10 Soon

Microsoft's increasingly underhand attempts to make the entire world upgrade to Windows 10 whether it wants to or not are, in theory, coming to an end this Summer. From regular, irritating nagging to quietly dumping several gigabytes' worth of speculative install files onto your hard drive to even performing the upgrade unbidden if you don't intervene in time, MS's determination to have a huge installbase number to wave around have pissed off a great many people. Come July 29th, though, they should be finally giving up.

This is because that July 29th marks a year since release, and thus the end of the year in which Windows 7 or 8 users could upgrade to 10 for free. After that, it'll cost you $119. In theory; I find it hard to believe that MS will entirely give up on their attempt to have Windows 10 on every computer in every house on every street in every town in every nation.

What this means is that the 'Get Windows 10' app, which has been the major source of the pestering, will be removed and disabled - though not right away. In a statement to WinBeta, Microsoft wrote that "Details are still being finalized, but on July 29th the Get Windows 10 app that facilitates the easy upgrade to Windows 10 will be disabled and eventually removed from PCs worldwide. Just as it took time to ramp up and roll out the Get Windows 10 app, it will take time to ramp it down."

Good news if you don't want Windows 10, be it on principle (hard sells are so ugly) or because of practical concerns about software or hardware compatibility, privacy or data loss. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Windows 10 is a good operating system. But it should be a choice, not a mandate.

Of course, if Microsoft do decide to extend the free offer, that troublesome nag app might come right back...