Windows 10 Home And Pro USB Flash Drives Now Available For Pre-Order

Here's the deal folks, if you own a valid copy of Windows 7 with SP1 installed or Windows 8.1, you can upgrade to Windows 10 free of charge for the first year. You may have even registered for your upgrade via a taskbar icon. If not, go ahead and get in line -- Microsoft will begin doling out Windows 10 updates on July 29, which will roll out in waves.

What if you don't own a copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and plan on building a new system? Well, you'll have to pony up for Windows 10. If you're feeling anxious, you can place your pre-order right now at Amazon. The online seller is offering Windows 10 Home for $120 and Windows 10 Pro for $200, both of which will arrive on a USB flash drive.

Windows 10

Which version should you get? Windows 10 Home is primarily for general consumers. It will have Microsoft's Cortana Assistant, Edge browser (previously known as Project Spartan), Continuum tablet mode for touch capable devices, Windows Hell face-recognition (along with iris and fingerprint login), universal Windows apps, and the ability to capture and share game play for Xbox One owners.

Windows 10 Pro is mostly for businesses and will have the same feature-set, plus additional goodies like domain join services, BitLocker drive encryption, remote access services, Group Policy editor, and Windows Update for Business -- items of interest to administrators and some power users, in other words.

One thing to note, these USB sticks might be in short supply. Yesterday Amazon had listed a ship date of August 16 for both versions, but at the time of this writing, both say "this item will be released on August 30, 2015."