Microsoft's decision to make Windows 10 available for free for the first year of its existence is well-intentioned and easy to understand: it wants to try to unify the user base, making it easier for developers to target the newest version of Windows rather than the oldest one that still has a substantial chunk of users. In theory, anyone who has bought a computer since Windows 7 came out in late 2009 (or even earlier, if you took advantage of that free "upgrade option program" back in the day) can get Windows 10. In practice, you may not be able to upgrade if the company that made your PC doesn't feel like supporting it.
The catalyst for this article was a support page from Sony about which Vaio PCs would be able to install Windows 10 and when drivers for them would actually be made available. As you might recall, Sony exited the PC business early last year, leaving the company with little reason to provide its current users long-term support. If you bought a Sony PC with Windows 8.1 preinstalled, Sony says it will provide you updated drivers and applications by October of 2015. For Windows 8.0 machines, drivers and apps will follow in November of 2015. And if you happened to buy a Sony computer with Windows 7 installed, you're going to get "upgrade information" sometime this month—but don't hold your breath for new apps or drivers.
The situation isn't quite as bad with the PC OEMs that are still in the business, but even then you'll find that most of the major players only promise "official" support for systems sold within the last two to three years. Lenovo, Dell, Acer, and Toshiba all have detailed support pages that list all the supported models, and in all cases, official support tends to dry up around 2012—if not before. HP and Asus don't have full lists available, but they each provide system lookup pages for checking out individual computers. Samsung's page, on the other hand, is singularly uphelpful.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment