Microsoft has announced that its next operating system will be offered as a free upgrade to owners of devices running Windows 8, Windows 7 or the Windows Phone.

The offer, which is limited to the operating system’s first year of release, may aid its adoption, marking a change in strategy from the corporation’s previous policy of charging for major updates This could help avoid a repeat of the relatively slow uptake of Windows 8 (only 10% of the Windows market is estimated to be running on Windows 8 or 8.1).

One of the core benefits of Windows 10 will be that it will run as a single app on multiple types of device, with the user interface reformatting itself to suit the machine it is running on, rather than having a different program for phones, tablets and PCs.

In particular for us Excel users, it has been reported that more advanced versions of the firm’s popular Office programs Excel, Powerpoint and Word could be brought to handsets running Windows 10 than were possible under Windows Phone 8 – and that this will be for free. It has also been confirmed that the firm’s web browser, Internet Explorer, was to be replaced by a new program codenamed Project Spartan. That’s an interesting code name – hopefully, the new program won’t live up to its billing!

Watch this space.