Microsoft have come up with a Christmas present for Windows 8.1 and 7 users who haven’t yet made the switch to Windows 10.
Up until now, the easiest way to upgrade to Windows 10 was using the Get Windows 10 icon that appeared in the System Tray at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen a few months ago.
Using this wizard, you could quickly install Windows 10 on your Windows 8.1 or 7 system for free, leaving all of your data in place.
The wizard could get a bit annoying – if you didn’t make the upgrade, it would periodically remind you that Windows 10 was available and you should install it. But, it was possible to ignore the message.
Now Microsoft have turned up the volume. In their effort to make everyone switch to Windows 10, they’ve modified the upgrade tool so that you have the option to upgrade immediately, or upgrade this evening.
The option not to upgrade is no longer presented as a button. If you want to stick with your current Windows system, you need to click the red cross in the top right-hand corner of the window but this isn’t too obvious.
Microsoft are clearly hoping that people will simply get sick of trying to get rid of all of these notification messages and simply upgrade to Windows 10 for a quiet life.
Most Windows users were pretty excited when they learned that they could upgrade for free from Windows 8.1 or 7. But now it seems that Microsoft is more or less forcing all users of those systems to upgrade, whether they want to or not.
Early next year, Microsoft also plan to make Windows 10 a ‘recommended’ update via the Windows Update patch tool. This means that it will be even harder to avoid installing Windows 10, since if you have Windows configured to install updates automatically it will be included in the bundle of patches applied to your system.