In a blog post celebrating Windows 10 nearing its one year anniversary, Microsoft announced that the Windows 10 free upgrade promotional offer will be ending July 29, 2016. After this date, the full version of Windows 10 Home edition will cost $119, although the operating system will still be available for free on new devices.
Microsoft is also planning an anniversary update for Windows 10, bringing new features to the platform used by 300 million active devices worldwide. These features include biometric login credentials for the Microsoft Edge browser and apps, digital pen writing, a collection of Windows 10 apps that support Cortana, support for Cortana and background music for the Xbox One, and education tools to support Windows 10 use by teachers in classrooms.
Microsoft recently stopped allowing workarounds for Windows 10 users hoping to use Cortana with something other than Bing and Microsoft Edge, which replaced the infamous Internet Explorer browser as Microsoft’s default web browser.
Windows 10 has been criticized in the past for privacy reasons, because of the amount of user information sent back to Microsoft by default. For example, as Microsoft’s privacy policy states that Bing search queries and voice commands to Cortana are all sent to Microsoft to “improve and personalize” user experiences, and to “make the ads we show you more relevant to you.”
