So Ive had that little Windows icon sitting in my system tray for over a month now. You know the one: looks like the four-pane Windows logo, sits down by the clock, and every time I click it by accident it opens up this "reserve your free upgrade" screen that Im not ready to deal with yet. Turns out Im finally ready to deal with it, because Windows 10 actually ships a week from tomorrow, next Wednesday, July 29th. Eight days. Its coming whether Im organized about it or not, so I figured Id write down what Ive actually done to get my machines ready, partly for me and partly because I know at least three people are going to ask me about this over the next week and Id rather just send them a link.
First thing: the reservation itself. If youre on Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8.1, you get this upgrade free, full stop, no catch that Ive found, as long as you do it within the first year. Click the icon, sign in with a Microsoft account (or skip that part if you want, it'll still let you reserve locally I think), and it downloads the install files in the background over however many days it takes. Mine took about four days on my home connection to grab something like 3GB, trickling down in the background so it wouldnt choke out anything else I was doing. Which, fine, I guess, but it also means if youre on a metered connection or still dealing with a data cap from your ISP (looking at you, satellite internet people), you might want to go find the reservation tool's settings and tell it to only download over wifi.
What Im actually backing up first
Before I let it touch either of my machines Im doing a full image backup, not just a copy of My Documents. Ive been burned before by an OS upgrade eating a driver or deciding some program isnt compatible anymore, and Id rather spend forty minutes now than lose a weekend later. I use Macrium Reflect's free version for this, mostly because its free and Ive used it for years and never had it lie to me. If you dont already have an external drive lying around, honestly, go buy one — a 1TB USB drive is running about $55-60 right now and its cheap insurance. Dont skip this step because "the upgrade is supposed to be safe." Supposed to be is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Disk space is the other thing nobody tells you about upfront. You need something like 16GB free for the 32-bit version or 20GB for 64-bit, on top of whatever your Windows Update process needs to stage the actual install. If youre on an older laptop with one of those tiny 32GB or 64GB eMMC drives, and I know some of you are because those cheap Windows laptops were everywhere last year, you are going to have a bad time. Go clean out your Downloads folder now. Uninstall stuff you dont use. Ive got a friend whose netbook literally cannot fit the upgrade without her deleting half her music library first, and thats a conversation Id rather have with her this week than the morning of the 29th when shes panicking.
My actual plan
Im doing my desktop on day one, mostly out of curiosity and because if it breaks Im the only one inconvenienced. My work laptop is staying on 7 for at least another month, maybe longer — I need it to work, not to be exciting, and Ive got exactly zero interest in troubleshooting a driver issue for my dock or my second monitor setup during a week Ive got deadlines. Thats not me being anti-upgrade, its just triage. New OS versions always have a rough couple of weeks where random peripherals dont play nice yet, and I dont need to be the one finding those bugs on a machine I actually depend on.
One other small thing worth mentioning: if youre currently pirating Windows or running an unactivated copy, apparently the free upgrade offer still applies in some cases, which is a weirdly generous move from a company that used to be famous for chasing down every unlicensed copy it could find. Not sure Id bet on that being permanent, but its interesting that they're leading with "just get everyone on one version" instead of "lets litigate this."
Anyway. Back up your stuff, clear some disk space, and go poke that little tray icon before next Wednesday sneaks up on you.