You've probably heard about Microsoft's newest Operating System release: Windows 10. One of the biggest differences between Windows 10 and all previous major OS releases is that Windows 10 is completely free to upgrade to from any valid Windows 7 or Windows 8 license. That's right, free!

This doesn't always mean you should upgrade right away though, first you need to make sure that all of the drivers you require are compatible with the new Operating System so that you don't lose functionality upon upgrading. Then you have to consider software - since Windows 10 is still so new you'll want to make sure all of the applications you run on a day to day basis will work just as well on the new OS. And then of course there's some minor bugs you might want to give Microsoft a little time to work out (however so far the launch seems to be significantly better than that of Windows 8).

That being said, many people will start to wonder what is in store for the future of Toughbooks, and when they can expect to see Windows 10 available on new Toughbooks. Luckily, Panasonic anticipated this question, and released a letter to their customers outlining exactly that.

In short, Panasonic is planning on beginning to offer "some models with Windows 10 preloaded in late 2015 or early 2016". Like they did with Windows 8, you'll have the option to choose the downgrade to Windows 7, with the recovery partition able to recover to either Windows 7 or Windows 10, letting you upgrade whenever you choose. They foresee being able to offer this option for one year after Microsoft announces the end of Windows 7 sales support for small purchases. Microsoft expects that all extended support for Windows 7 will be suspended in early 2020, so this doesn't seem to be any time in the near future.

I will say, however, that so far Windows 10 has been great. Personally, I have encountered very few issues. The only issue that I've really had so far is that for some reason Microsoft Edge doesn't seem to be working to open PDFs that are on a web page, however since I still use Chrome for browsing the Internet, this really isn't a big deal. 

If you'd like to read the whole letter from Panasonic, click here.