Best way to upgrade Windows 8.1 to 10?

Want to upgrade my laptop from 8.1 to 10 today or later this week. I want to do an in place upgrade. What is the best way to upgrade? Should I update via the system tray icon or is running from a .iso or similar more reliable?

Finally, is the in place upgrade from 8.1 to 10 rather reliable? With 7 I'd do a clean install but I do want to keep my programs/file structure in place for my laptop as it would be a pain to reinstall everything.

Upgrading from the icon should be fine.

hit the the square icon on the lower left. It is quick and easy, You have to do that anyway before a clean install if you want to do that. But it is not needed.

you can dl the media creation tool too and make either a bootable USB or burn a DVD of the installation files , in case you ever need to reinstall in the future , or want to do a clean install later
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

i think you can run the install right from that page as well

once you activate Win 10 you never need to put in a cd key again if you reinstall (provided you make no massive hardware changes ) , your Win 10 key is stored on the MS activation servers
and it will auto activate on its own if you do a clean install later

Once you do the upgrade make sure to run disk cleanup, click clean up system files, then remove both the setup and windows old to free up 10-20GB or more. Then run a disk optimization to compact the drive.

When I tried 10 from 8.1, it was smooth with no issues; however, on my other system with 7, it did not go very well. In the end, I went back to 8.1 and 7.

Downloading it now but will install later as it won't finish tonight. It says I'll have the option to schedule the upgrade later - can I choose when I want to do the actual upgrade? Don't want it to start upgrading the next time I start it up. Want to set aside some time for the upgrade... and be at home where I can plug it in. Win 8.1 has a nasty habit of forcing upgrades at the worst times, even when they are disabled.

Edit:

It downloaded a ~2.7GB file via Windows Update. Now it is "Preparing for installation..." does this mean I actually can't reschedule the actual upgrade for tomorrow or later? This is what it is showing now:

http://i.imgur.com/ZYAgdKJ.jpg

Only option is to cancel. I just wanted to download the files and quickly install in the coming days.

Update via the system tray icon allows users to keep your files and apps, it is a great choice for you.