On The Download

Did you get Windows 10 yet? I signed up for my free upgrade months ago, at my son's behest. At the time, I had been staring at the notification in the bottom right hand corner of my screen for a few days. I could not believe that Bill Gates was going to simply hand over important technological breakthroughs. For free? I have spent a great deal of time and effort teaching my son that anything that sounds too good to be true probably isn't. That's how they get you. Sign up for something that says "free," and you can almost guarantee that sooner or later you'll end up paying for it in one way or another. My son, with the patience of a child who has grown weary of his father's lessons, listened to my well-founded paranoia and told me to lighten up and sign up.
I did. Then I waited. The little icon in the corner of my screen kept taunting me with the enticing and nearly constant reminder of the July 29 release date. When that day came and went, I started to get fussy. "See, I told you," I lamented to my son.
"Dad, you can just go to their web site and download it right now." Easy.
"No, I'll wait." Somehow, I figured that if the free download never came my defeatist mentality would be vindicated. So I waited. Every day, I assumed that I would find some new notification or I would discover my screen in a weird state of flux. When I didn't, I clicked on that icon, expecting to be told that there was some problem with my account and I would be cordially invited to purchase Windows 10 at some low discount price. But not free.
Then, last Thursday night, it was my turn. All of a sudden, I was being asked to click on a few buttons and watch while my former Windows 7 magically transformed into a platform three generations removed. I was getting updated without having to buy a new machine. It turned out to be reletively painless, and much to my son's chagrin, free.
To be honest, I haven't discovered a lot of the bells and whistles that are supposed to be out there. I hear there's something called "Cortana," a personal assistant that I can only assume is on a par with Siri and her ilk. For free. If I remember right, Skynet was a free download too.