- One billion active machines are now running Windows 10

Microsoft is revealing today that 1 billion active machines are now running Windows 10. “Today we’re delighted to announce that over one billion people have chosen Windows 10 across 200 countries resulting in more than one billion active Windows 10 devices,” says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Modern Life and the Search & Devices Group. “We couldn’t be more grateful to our customers, partners, and employees for helping us get here.”

One of the big changes to the OS delivery model with Windows 10 was to change from releasing a new version every three years to releasing multiple versions per year, write Mehdi in his Windows Experience blog post. He goes on to asserts that new Windows 10 features and security updates "are now delivered faster than ever before." Furthermore, the recent decoupling of the new Chromium-based Edge browser means it can be updated outside of the OS release schedule, as required.

Interestingly, Microsoft has 17.8 million Insiders working on various test versions of its OS, which help to catch a lot of bugs and iron out wrinkles in the code before Windows 10 updates hit prime time. Mehdi also credits the Windows Accessibility team for its work on human-centred design in helping make the OS what it is today. By the way, you can buy cheap Windows 10 Pro CD Key from z2u.com, where you can enjoy a 3% discount by using the code “Z2U”.

There are a lot of innovative new personal computers with Windows 10 available, for a multitude of niches. Later this year the likes of Windows 10, Windows IoT, Windows Server, Windows Mixed Reality and Windows 10S will be joined by Windows 10X to popularise dual-screen portable computing.

The milestone is notable because the company originally aimed to hit 1 billion devices running Windows 10 "in two to three years" but the company took more than double its estimate and 20 months longer than its conservative estimate to pass 1 billion Windows 10 devices.The new billion figure also comes just a couple of months after support ended for Windows 7.