Official Microsoft blog lays out Windows 10 upgrade paths and scenarios

Update - 21 May 2015

It appears the blog post which we used as the basis for this story has been changed significantly as of today.  All of the bulleted information below, which was quoted directly from that post, is no longer present on that page for some reason.

It is possible that there was more information there than Microsoft wanted published at this point however, the post itself does not contain any explanation as to why it was modified.

I suspect there are multiple grains of truth in what we picked up and hopefully Microsoft will clarify the entire upgrade and licensing situation sooner rather than later.

Original story follows:

In the last week we have learned that there will be six Windows 10 Editions when the new OS releases over the course of the next several months.

Microsoft is yet to explain the exact details of how the free Windows 10 upgrade will work for users of Windows 7/8.1.

While that info is expected as we get closer to Windows 10 RTM, which is currently sometime this summer, I may have found some good indicators of the various paths to Windows 10.

While I was perusing the official MSDN RSS feeds earlier today I came across a blog post from the Microsoft Australia Partner Network site which was a recap of recent Windows 10 announcements.

In this blog post, written by Alex Snelson a Windows product manager for Microsoft Australia, the free upgrade scenarios and licensing for the various Windows 10 Editions including eligibility for the free upgrade, upgrade paths and licensing channels are laid out.

First, here is the list of editions that were announced last week and free upgrade/licensing info:

Secondly, she lays out the version of Windows 7/8.1 and what they are eligible to upgrade to under Windows 10:

Based on that last bullet it appears the Windows 10 update will be provided to properly licensed versions of Windows 7/8.1 through Windows Update instead of the Windows Store. This is exactly how Microsoft initially pushed the Windows 10 Technical Preview to Insiders on Windows 7 and 8.1 so the system has been well tested.

You might recall that Microsoft pushed the Windows 8.1 update to users on Windows 8 through the Windows Store and it proved to have its share of challenges.

Hopefully, Microsoft will also provide properly licensed users of Windows 7/8.1 with a license key that can be used with an ISO of the correct version of Windows 10 for their system instead of having to install the old OS and subsequent updates in order to perform the upgrade to Windows 10 if a clean install is necessary.

Thankfully, once the update to Windows 10 has been done, the user should also be able to use the Reset or Refresh options in Windows to give themselves a fresh start with Windows 10 as necessary.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.