Thorqemada, on 13 July 2015 - 05:03 AM, said:
Still no reliable info about the monetization sheme - some say Win10 is free for 2 to 4 years (Home/Pro) and then you have to pay for stuff yet to be decided.
I understand that they need to make some money but i will choose what is more cost efficient in the long run.
Win7 is supported past 2020 afaik...
PS: And right true - no 32bit to 64bit transformation...
Officially the only thing free is the upgrade, and its only free for one year. You can upgrade any edition of Win 7, 8, and 8.1 to the corresponding Win 10 edition until July 29, 2016.
Win 10 will always be for sale. They will still be selling it to the system manufacturers directly (ie Dell, HP, etc) and it will be in retail stores for purchase (for people upgrading from Vista and older and the roll-your-own hardware types).
The real "game changer" here is that once you are on Win 10, upgrades to it will always be free (until they announce differently I guess).
As for 32bit vs 64bit, for the most part the key you currently have should entitle you to both versions (retail packages contain both 32bit and 64bit). You can't upgrade to 64bit on top of 32 bit but you can reinstall the 64bit version using the same key (it just blows away the previous install so backup everything before doing so).
source for Win10 upgrades and availability:
http://www.tomshardw...lity,29696.html