If you’re still waiting for that little icon on your taskbar to alert you that your free copy of Windows 10 is ready to be installed, there’s a good chance you could be waiting quite a while. With hundreds of millions of Windows 7 and 8.1 users on more than a billion devices, the gradual Windows 10 rollout is going to take some time, and Microsoft estimates that it could be weeks before everyone gets their hands on their free copy of the new operating system.
Windows 10 officially launched on Wednesday, beginning its rollout to millions of PCs around the world. In the weeks leading up to the launch, Microsoft actively invited owners of Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs to ‘reserve’ a copy of the new OS in advance of its rollout, promising to notify them when their PCs were ready to upgrade. Microsoft revealed earlier today that, in the first 24 hours of availability, 14 million PCs were upgraded to Windows 10, and it looks like that number may have climbed quickly since then to around 67 million. These are impressive figures – but given that there are hundreds of millions of PCs running Windows 7 and 8.1, there’s clearly a long way to go. Microsoft has already said that it’s delivering upgrade notifications ‘in waves’, rather than allowing everyone to upgrade at once, in an effort to ensure a smooth upgrade for all users. But how long will this process take? Microsoft UK says that some users who have already reserved their copies of Windows 10 will be waiting weeks to upgrade.
