Ever since Microsoft released Windows 10 in July 2015, the company’s new operating system has become one of the most successful since Microsoft launched Windows 95 to much fanfare back in August 1995. Actually, Windows 10 has been downloaded more than 200 million times to date, and is currently the second most-used OS in the world with an almost 18 % market share according to netmarketshare.com.
Microsoft has obviously been encouraging people to upgrade to Windows 10, citing advantages like the improved user interface over Windows 8, and the new OS’s better security, and also the fact that Windows 10 is free for current users of Windows 7 until July 29 this year. So given that Windows 10 is essentially a major Windows upgrade for zilch, Microsoft would rightly think that most PC users would be enthusiastic to get it on their machines, although it seems that isn’t necessarily the case.
Actually some users have been resisting the constant messages and notifications on Windows 7 encouraging to move on to the next and greatest Windows version, so it seems Microsoft has been resorting to more aggressive tactics of late to get the OS on people’s machines, including making Windows 10 a “scheduled update” on Windows 7, which will happen at a future time and date unless the user manually cancels said update.
This led to Windows 10 attempting to install itself on the computer of one unaware woman in the US state of California, who claimed to have “never heard of Windows 10”. This led to the computer at her travel agency becoming “unusable” and not let her carry on with her work properly for days. Infuriated by the ordeal, she decided to sue Microsoft and actually ended up winning the case, with Microsoft now having to pay her $10,000 US dollars for her consternation, according to Kotaku.
This case does set a dangerous precedent for the Redmond giant, and the company is unlikely to resort to aggressive tactics to get an operating system like Windows 10 on user’s computers anymore, even if it is masked as a free update… Asking for users’ consent would be a better course of action, as no matter how great Windows 10 is perhaps not every user is in the mood to upgrade at this point in time. Although those willing to do so still have until July 29, which is when the free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 expires, becoming a paid update after that date.