72 PCWorld SEPTEMBER 2020

FEATURE WINDOWS 10 AT 5

(go.pcworld.com/8pre)—even as PC

makers hoped and prayed (go.pcworld.com/

hope) that Windows 10 would outsell the

debacle that was Windows 8 (go.pcworld.

com/dbw8).

Well, it did. Improvements like Windows

Hello might be taken for granted now, but

they were groundbreaking for their time.

(Apple Macs still haven’t quite figured out

A

s Windows 10 turns five years

old this week, it’s a good time to

look at how much Windows 10

has changed the PC—with

everything from Windows Hello to free

updates, seemingly in perpetuity.

Microsoft began shipping Windows 10 to

PCs on July 29, 2015—“ordering pizza for 1.5

billion people (go.pcworld.com/pzza),” as

one Microsoft executive put it. Few

remember now that PC makers barely made

the launch (go.pcworld.com/brln), with

even Microsoft admitting most PCs would

ship with Windows 8 pre-installed instead

So far, Microsoft’s chosen to charge for applications like Office, not the Windows 10 OS itself.

VIDEO: WINDOWS 10

AT FIVE YEARS: HOW IT

TRANSFORMED THE PC

Watch now at go.pcworld.com/w10