I highly doubt it will be a free upgrade. microsoft wouldn't make any money from the consumer giving it away and pc vendors would be upset if they had to pay to put it on their systems but millions and millions of consumers didn't. the only way I can see this being a free upgrade is to those that are beta testers that tested this os for microsoft and provided feedback to it, then maybe it will be for them, like they have done in years past, but I just can't see microsoft just giving away an os to the mass public that already owns windows 8/7 and XP. The price will prob be similar to what windows 8 was when it first came out when they did a cheap promo deal to get people to upgrade and then when that deal expires they will prob charge 99 dollars for it like they did with windows 8.