No one had expected it to happen today. All the experts had said that Microsoft would keep thinking about pricing until the closer to the release date.

They were wrong.

At Microsoft's "Next Chapter" of the Windows 10 Story, Terry Myerson announced Microsoft's pricing strategy - for the first year - of Windows 10.

FREE. Zero Dollars. No Cost.

The Catch? Well, it's only free for users of Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

So, if you're on Windows Vista, it's not going to be free.

Or, if you are still on Windows 8.0, then it will still be free but you will have to update to Windows 8.1 (for free) first.

If your Windows Phone is running Windows Phone 8.1, then it will also be free. So, the only ones who lose out will be those on the HTC 8S that never received the update.

Of course, this pricing was only announced for the first year of Windows 10 availability so we will have to wait and see the pricing after that. It is a very good move for Microsoft to gain quick adoption of Windows 10 across the board. For users: It's new, it's free and it's familiar. For Microsoft, they can quickly roll out all the services that will depend on Windows 10 for best performance.