After launch mid-summer last year, Microsoft started offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and 8.1 users. As part of the effort to advertise this new offer, Microsoft took a variety of steps to ensure users were made aware of it. Unfortunately, these methods ranged from the benign all the way to outright malicious. Luckily for those of you still using the older Windows, Microsoft is finally stopping their Windows 10 advertisements.
The promotional Get Windows 10 software will now be removed with a new KB3184143 update. While the details are a bit slim, this should remove the nagware as well as any other advertisements built into the OS. This means no more annoying popups and deceptive options which basically forced an upgrade. Given that the Windows 10 free upgrade offer is now over, it’s about time the nagware was removed.
Interestingly, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 are still capable of being upgraded to Windows 10 for free as of today. This means for those of you that still want to upgrade, now would be a great time to do until the window of opportunity closes. With the promotional program winding down, it’s only a matter of time until Microsoft shuts down the free upgrade.
With this debacle behind us, it’s good to see Microsoft is taking the right steps to remove their nagware. However, their reputation has taken a heavy blow due to their overly aggressive tactics, the most egregious of which was sneaking adverts into the OS security patches. Hopefully, Microsoft will take note of this lesson and conduct themselves in a better fashion next time around to be more upfront to users and respect their autonomy.
