Windows Subscribers Given Second Chance For Free Windows 10 Upgrade

Microsoft is offering free Windows 10 upgrades to business customers with Windows subscriptions via its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme.

The offer extends to subscribers of Windows 10 Enterprise E3 and E5, as well as Secure Productive Enterprise E3 and E5, who are currently running outdated Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs.

This means corporate customers who missed out on the free Windows 10 upgrade offer, despite Microsoft making the campaign pretty much impossible to avoid, will get a second chance at upgrading to the company’s new and improved operating system.

Free upgrade

To take advantage of the offer, tenant admins need to log in to the Office 365 Admin centre with their Azure Active Directory credentials and look for the Windows 10 upgrade options and links that should have started appearing yesterday.

Selecting the option will start the upgrade on the device being used and the download link can be shared with others in the organisation.

“The Windows 10 upgrade licenses issued as part of this process are perpetual and associated with the device,” explains Nic Fillingham, small business product manager for Windows marketing, on the Windows blog. “This means the license will not expire or be revoked if the customer chooses to end their Windows cloud subscription in the CSP program.”

Despite Windows 10 being a notable improvement on its predecessor, Microsoft has faced severe criticism over the aggressive tactics used to make users upgrade, even being forced to pay one Californian woman a $10,000 (£7,600) settlement as the upgrade supposedly damaged her PC.

After being slammed by consumer watchdog Which? towards the end of last year, Microsoft recently admitted that the upgrade push went ‘too far,’ as the company desperately tried to stay on track with its goal of of having one billion devices running the OS by 2018.

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