Microsoft’s Windows 10 Update Strategy Is Showing Strains

Megalith

Megalith

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Analysts argue that Microsoft should cut the number of Windows 10 upgrades in half and pledge to support each version for 24 months. They say that upgrades come too frequently, leaving too little time for adequate compatibility testing of critical applications. Support is too fleeting, with each upgrade maintained for just 18 months, theoretically requiring seven migrations during the same timespan when previously only one was necessary.

“Enterprises do need more runway," said Silver, speaking of the time necessary to upgrade hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands, of devices from one Windows 10 version to another. Silver would then turn what might be construed as a retreat for Microsoft into a bauble it could dangle in front of Windows 10 Enterprise customers. "They're already paying more for the privilege of running Enterprise," Silver said of the highest-priced version of the OS. "Make the [expanded support] a benefit."
 
I will admit, every 6 months for a major feature update that takes 30-60 minutes to complete (roughly) is a bit of a bummer for our business clients, given that it seems like it tends to happen at the worst times.
 
MavericK said:
I will admit, every 6 months for a major feature update that takes 30-60 minutes to complete (roughly) is a bit of a bummer for our business clients, given that it seems like it tends to happen at the worst times.
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Not to mention the time it takes to comb through the OS and put all your setting back into place. Also, fixing all the things it broke with the update.
 
KarsusTG said:
Not to mention the time it takes to comb through the OS and put all your setting back into place. Also, fixing all the things it broke with the update.
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So far I have only noticed it resetting my advanced network share settings, which is annoying.
 
same, my laptop disk run constantly doing some windows maintenance in the background. I don't have an SSD drive on this laptop but the drive runs like none-stop. Windows updates shouldn't be like your PC is scanning the whole drive, should be quick and simply and run only on shutdown or lightly in the background without using too much disc memory and cpu usage.
 
zomby said:
same, my laptop disk run constantly doing some windows maintenance in the background. I don't have an SSD drive on this laptop but
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Even the Windows 7 updates where getting to be a problem with older mechanical drives..
Windows 10 runs better (faster) on the old drives, with the exception of updates.
These updates are so large and take so long to install, I don't dare deploy a laptop with windows 10 without also upgrading to an SSD.
 
They have long term support branches if you need support more than new features. Big nothing burger article from whiners that want things both ways :rolleyes:

MS could stand some better QA but that's a separate issue
 
Try being in the Tech Preview branch, even on the "slow" channel I was getting pushed new builds every other day. Not just patches, but the type of build that moves everything to Windows.old and resets a bunch of driver settings (Creative and sound settings, mainly). Not good if you have an SSD as that's a lot of unnecessary write cycles.

Luckily it's slowed in the past few weeks.

The only thing I've noticed between builds lately is the amount of bloat (that returns on reboot).
 
KarsusTG said:
Not to mention the time it takes to comb through the OS and put all your setting back into place. Also, fixing all the things it broke with the update.
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This is what drove us to dump Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7. Spending a couple of business days re-configuring settings the update changed was simply too costly.
 
There is LTSB windows 10 (if your paying the yearly thing, or not if you get it the other way)as it's supported for 10 years from its locked in build date (2015 and 2016)

it be nice if they would sell it for individual systems it make it legal to use with out other ways to make it work as the feature upgrades 2 times a year is a non starter for me and even if it was it resetting settings, defaults and GPOs makes it unusable in a small business environment or even on my personal computer it has broke stuff that should not brake (medium to large will likey be using Enterprise or Enterprise long-term support branch)
 
Yeah, Windows 10 update is the 'feature' that got me dual booting with Linux. Linux as my main OS and Windows 10 for games and the occasional Photoshop session. If I could get all my games to run under Linux (only about a 3rd of my Steam games are available under Linux) I'd probably remove the Windows 10 partition.
 
likeman said:
There is LTSB windows 10 (if your paying the yearly thing, or not if you get it the other way)as it's supported for 10 years from its locked in build date (2015 and 2016)

it be nice if they would sell it for individual systems it make it legal to use with out other ways to make it work as the feature upgrades 2 times a year is a non starter for me and even if it was it resetting settings, defaults and GPOs makes it unusable in a small business environment or even on my personal computer it has broke stuff that should not brake (medium to large will likey be using Enterprise or Enterprise long-term support branch)
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You beat me to it. Enterprise costumers and any OVL or OVS licensed users of Windows 10 Enterprise have access to and should be using the LTSB version if they require longer deployment and support terms. This is why it was made just like with Red Hat and Ubuntu Server.

If there is a company or business that needs long term platform support and maintenance. Don't blame Microsoft for the upgrade issues, blame your IT Director for not planning the use of the proper version of Windows for your infrastructure requirements.

I do think on the other normal versions the updates need to be slowed to once a year. As on all my clients, the upgrades are rolled out in a controlled manner but there is always some strange bug that has showed up in each upgrade version that just wrecks something and then is simply fixed with the next CU. Just slow it down and make the upgrade is finished instead of trying push for an unsustainable roll out timeline.
 
Dead Parrot said:
I wonder if the Microsoft campus gets updated as often as the rest of the world?
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What I've been told is that they are "encouraged" to be using the betas on their products. So the O365 sales guy will have the beta version of O365 on his machines from time to test the latest and greatest features so he knows what there is available to try to sell. I don't know what people outside of sales use though.
 
I'm a big Windows 10 guy -- it's on all my computers. However, the issue isn't the frequency of the updates, its the necessity of the updates. Allow users to install them when they want to. I see that now, how that is a critical missing part. Do not force the feature updates.
 
Maybe they can update all the bloatware, spyware, and virus's out of 10? Then choose what stuff to update. People would like a choice, more so when stuff breaks from it.
 
These are the updates that restart your computer automatically during the middle of night causing you to loose whatever you doing, but somehow it's my fault that it happens because I didn't acknowledge or incorrectly acknowledged the confusingly worded pop-up? I love those!
 
Hagrid said:
Maybe they can update all the bloatware, spyware, and virus's out of 10? Then choose what stuff to update. People would like a choice, more so when stuff breaks from it.
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if you like choices, you will LOVE Windows 10

windows-10-privacy-settings-b-400x318.jpg
 
bman212121 said:
If you listen to Microsoft's official recommendation, you totally don't need the LTSB and shouldn't need to use it anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if all IT directors hear how you just need to get everything migrated to the cloud and keep up with the latest trends to stay relevant from their MS reps.
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That again puts the blame on the IT Directors for not doing what they know they need to do and listening to a glorified sales/marketing person from the manufacture. LTSB is very common in enterprise for OS, platforms and inline business apps and any CIO, IT Director or IT Manager that is worth a shit will know if they need LTSB or not no matter what the manufacture says.
 
Are there 3rd party utilities that you can use to preserve window settings between updates?
 
I handle system imaging at work (Mac, Windows, Linux) and Windows 10 definitely makes my imaging process... interesting. For me, my setup is nimble and generic enough that I can just tweak my code and it's all good, and the Fall Creator Update definitely had me tweaking code. We have exactly (1) app that is having issues with the FCU and one that's still having issues with the previous Creator's Update that we're still waiting on fixes for (one of these, I have low expectations for the long-term viability of the product so I am not holding my breath).

It is funny to open a support case and be told "You're our first customer on that version!"
 
Dead Parrot said:
So how does having a minimum of 8GB of RAM make a system more secure?
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SGTGimpy said:
That again puts the blame on the IT Directors for not doing what they know they need to do and listening to a glorified sales/marketing person from the manufacture. LTSB is very common in enterprise for OS, platforms and inline business apps and any CIO, IT Director or IT Manager that is worth a shit will know if they need LTSB or not no matter what the manufacture says.
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i assume that the OVL or OVS allows you to basically pick anything from pro to LTSB

Considered to use windows 10 2016 LTSB on my main system as i am just not sure if i can be bothered with stuff braking twice a year even with pro version set to 120 days delay,, which should be 3 months due to CBB branch + 120 days i set + 5 days delay for security updates as well, which would of not helped me this time with the dot matrix printers been disabled in november "security" roll up date, at least that botched update affected all versions of windows 7,8,10
 
MavericK said:
I will admit, every 6 months for a major feature update that takes 30-60 minutes to complete (roughly) is a bit of a bummer for our business clients, given that it seems like it tends to happen at the worst times.
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I've been saying the same since anniversary. From my private rigs, which are almost alien to the ones at my job where I net admin for, I see far too diverse of products losing support for or having features changed/discontinued from the day before. It's a like a virtual PMS and I never really know who's getting pissed off or for what reason.
 
Is there another OS besides windows that has a longer stable cycle?
 
rudy said:
Is there another OS besides windows that has a longer stable cycle?
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Well. . .it's the opposite extreme but Android abandons you roughly in two years. So I guess in 24 months you don't have to worry about an update screwing you out of the hardware you had the day before.
 
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BSmith said:
This is what drove us to dump Windows 10 and go back to Windows 7. ...
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You've had time to migrate to Win 10 this fast?
We're still in the 3+ years preliminary evaluation period to make sure most software seems to work before implementing Win 10 on a few less sensitive machines. Full roll-out can then commence within a few years...
 
Hagrid said:
Maybe they can update all the bloatware, spyware, and virus's out of 10? Then choose what stuff to update. People would like a choice, more so when stuff breaks from it.
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You're asking them to take the 10 out of Windows 10.
 
bman212121 said:
If you listen to Microsoft's official recommendation, you totally don't need the LTSB and shouldn't need to use it anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if all IT directors hear how you just need to get everything migrated to the cloud and keep up with the latest trends to stay relevant from their MS reps.
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And you would be very very correct. Fortune 250 company and I see it all the time, MS sale team pushes "streaming updates" for both Office and OS, Cloud is the way to go here have some store simple appliances to help move you to cloud and lastly, Azure will save you money and keep you relevant. That is preached constantly with a new sprinkling of "MS is a security company"

Unfortunately MS strategy is #1 to make money and #2 has been focused on consumer with all of these. Office has been a miserable pain to update past 2 years with the LARGE (500 to 800 meg) updates individual clients all require(thank goodness for Nomad for SCCM). LTSB is not really what they sell it to be because guess what, all the feature they sell you with new product updates require newer versions of OS. So you end up being forced to update to current branch to get things like One Drive to work efficiently.
 
T_A said:
It pretty annoying , each version changes some major setting and can break my GPO, they need to relax with the updates.
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Relax? More like do away with them. Nobody has asked for these kind of updates, they just use it to keep resetting your settings and default apps, re-install the crap they're pushing, and hope that it sticks. There are very little to no actual worthwhile changes in these. Trickling down features that we took for granted in older windows versions like the damn ability to change the color of the title bar. W10 needed a "creators" update for that.

It's all bull and windows10 should die in a fiery hell rather sooner than later.
 
Quotes from the article:
But the radical release-and-support strategy, which Microsoft asserts has transformed Windows into a service, has not resonated with every customer.

...

"I have always felt this whole cadence, I refuse to call it a service as the service only benefits Microsoft, made no sense"

...

Another analyst, Michael Silver of Gartner, concurred. "Enterprises need to have a way to do one update a year. That would go a long way to resolve this," Silver said, referring to the issues enterprises have with the Windows-as-a-service (WaaS) model.
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There is something that I think everybody should be aware of, about Microsoft's desire to rebrand Windows as a service. Whether something is a Product or a Service is a legal matter, and the classification impacts consumer and corporate rights and privileges. And if Microsoft is trying to get people to think of Windows as a service right now, it's because Microsoft is wanting to rebalance the distribution of rights, ownership, etc of their Windows products somewhere down the line. Perhaps Microsoft seeks to do away with perpetual Windows licenses, and to make Windows a monthly subscription service - which could fit Microsoft's claim that Windows 10 would be the last Windows.

That said, Windows used with a perpetual Windows license is definitely not a service, but is instead a product. The updating functionality in Windows can be considered a service, but Windows itself is a product, no matter how much Microsoft tries to play mental gymnastics.

People should not play into Microsoft's self-serving propaganda, which is what the whole "Windows as a service" charade is. It's similar to developers trying to convince customers that they don't own the software they buy, they license it - which is conniving people, hiding the full, more-empowering truth from them: When people buy a perpetual software license, it represents a non-reproducable instance of a particular software, with the purchaser of that perpetual license becoming the sole owner of that instance of the software, holding the full property rights over that software instance. What a person does not buy is the Intellectual Property of the software.

So, when a person buys a perpetual license for a piece of software, they do own the software they bought, which is the one instance that their license represents. They don't, however, own the software IP. So, the phrase "this software is licensed, not sold" is misleading publisher propaganda. The software (instance / license) is sold / bought; The software (IP) is not sold / bought.

Conditioning customers into thinking that they don't own anything of the software they paid for plays to the benefit of corporations / publishers, because it creates the impression that the balance of power is entirely in the corporation / publisher's hands, and creates a master / slave relationship between the corporation / publisher and the consumer, rather than a relationship where both sides have defined and inalienable entitlements.

But, the corporation / publisher propaganda isn't the truth, and corporation / publisher EULAs are often filled with unenforceable stipulations, because EULAs are not laws, but are publisher conditions that to be enforceable must conform to the law, or are otherwise nothing more than corporate wet dreams. And there are often wet-dream claims in EULAs, which is why all product messaging that comes from corporations / publishers needs to be analyzed with discretion and compared to the higher powers of law.


My point is that, just as I think nobody should repeat the corporate propaganda line of 'this software is not sold, it is licensed,' because the semantical meanings of that phrase make its face value deceptive and misleading, I also think that nobody should be repeating Microsoft's public conditioning effort to reconceptualize what is definitively a product as a service - as doing so would be undermining the position of Windows license owners, and is selling oneself off for Microsoft's sole selfish benefit.


In another case of Microsoft trying to rebrand the truth in order to exploit Windows owners, the Dutch DPA said to me in email regarding their investigation into Microsoft's allegedly illegal (by EU law) data-harvesting in Windows 10:

"We also explain why all the telemetry data collected by Microsoft are indeed personal data, and certainly not anonymous, regardless of the view of MS that they would only relate to the system/be 'mere' technical data."
 
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