Most of us get Windows 10 installed on a new PC that we buy, and most casual users probably don’t know which Windows 10 version they have. For most consumer PCs, Windows 10 Home is the installed platform. For people who purchase their Windows separate off the shelf, the price for doing so has gone up.
Microsoft has quietly bumped the price of Windows 10 Home off the shelf. If you are unfamiliar with downloadable Windows 10 (again, most receive the platform pre-installed), it usually comes with a so-called “Windows tax”.
Customers buying the download version of Windows 10 Home will now have to pay $139, which is a $19.01 increase over the previous $119.99 price.
While most people will get Windows 10 Home pre-installed, there is a subset who need the physical version. For example, people building their own PC or are loading Windows onto Apple’s Boot Camp for dual-boot on Mac.
It seems as Microsoft implemented this price change before the October 2018 Update was launched. In fact, reports suggest the price change was made early in September but only noticed now. Because of this, it is possible to still get Windows 10 Home for the old price at certain retailers.
Paused October 2018 Update
Hiking the price of Windows 10 has come at a bad time for Microsoft. Over the weekend, the company was forced to halt the roll out of the October 2018 Update due to a bug. It’s hardly a good advertisement for the platform’s quality.
There has been an issue with the manual update for Windows 10 October 2018 Update. Specifically, the update was deleting personal user files such as images and document.
