Windows 10 Insiders see double as new builds hit the deck – with promises to end Update Rage

Re: Predictive Fuckups

I think it needs a (possibly hard to find unless you're a techie) option to return to the pre-Windows 10 way of doing things for those of us who know what we're doing.

Re: Predictive Fuckups

Since Microsoft is hell-bent on being total assholes on this issue, they could still continue their assholish behavior -- but just dial it back a bit: make updates mandatory, thus satisfying their urge to be total dicks, but don't automatically reboot the machine. All users are going to reboot of their own accord sooner or later, at which point the updates will be applied. Automatic reboots are totally unnecessary.

I don't care what magic pixie dust software Microsoft claims to have -- none of it can possible know better than the user when a reboot is acceptable.

Re: Predictive Fuckups

Because they might choose "never" because their machines are running nice and stable.

And that should be their prerogative. And yes, I've heard all the tiresome arguments about botnets and costs to society and such - I'm in IT security, after all. I am yet to be persuaded that they override users' right to control their own equipment.

Update nagging was bad enough. Forced updates¹ are an abomination.

¹By the OS vendor. When, say, my IT department forces updates on corporate equipment, that may be annoying; but it's their equipment, not mine.

Re: Predictive Fuckups

Wouldn't that be wonderful for a change!!

Re: Predictive Fuckups

Your argument would be strong for why automatic updates should be enabled by default. It in no way supports the idea that you can't disable them if you wish.

My computer does not belong to Microsoft, and them acting like it does just because people might mistakenly blame them for malfunctions is no excuse for them to do that.

Re: Predictive Fuckups

I have had to support and fix a lot (really, very very many) of end-user Windows desktops all the way back to 98 ME and the number of tickets associated with update neglect is truly minuscule.

The vast, vast, vast majority of borked boxes are borked by hardware issues (mostly disk drives), malware, viruses, browser toolbars (including those shipped with the official eff'n Java RE!), free games carrying trojans, general incompetence (You could rename the Windows dir, in Windows 3.1. Don't try it at home.) and, yes, Windows Updates gone wrong.

Actually, even just the number of Updates-Gone-Wrong, taken alone, dwarfs the number of machines borked by update neglect.

Microsoft need to employ a bit of subtlety. Paint "Updates are Available" on device-context 0 in hot-pink Comic Sans for all I care but just stop restarting my PC when it's training my models, downloading my stuffs, encoding my things, doing the jobs and processing those datas.

Re: Predictive Fuckups

@Def

Have an upvote for accurately portraying the user-space mostly inhabited by the technically-clueless, and putting forward a cogent reason why MS should not just allow users to disable all updates permanently.

Now have a downvote for defending Microsoft's absolutely awful implementation of their update policy.

Yes I get it, there are bugs that need to be fixed and I agree that users should not be given the choice to ignore a critical bugfix. But there are also noncritical updates that should be optional. And, biggest issue of all, *it is completely unacceptable for a computer to go into maintenance mode without giving the user an idea of whether this will last 3 minutes or 3 hours*.

All it takes is one setting (all updates or critical-only) and 1 popup window (Windows needs X minutes to perform updates, proceed now, or set a convenient time to do so )

Re: Predictive Fuckups

You can specify hours when your PC cannot reboot.

Not even close to good enough. I have large mathematical computations that can take _days_ to run. I need to be damn sure that it's not going to reboot at all, at any hour unless I specifically tell it to. Losing a weeks worth of work because one of the compute machines took upon itself to restart 90 hours into a 100 hour long computation is totally unacceptable.

(And before anyone says "Use Linux" I work in academia. I support academics. Some use Linux, some don't. The ones that don't need to get their computations to run just the same. I'm not going to re-write their software for them to solve a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.)

Re: Predictive Fuckups

You can specify hours when your PC cannot reboot.

To some extent, and this doesn't address the fundamental issue, which is that we don't want our systems rebooted at any time without our express permission.

Why would you think there's some time window every day when I don't want to preserve the current state of my system? It's not a dumb terminal; I'm actually trying to do work on it.

Yep - fact is, most people using Windows are just doing boring old stuff, running a few apps and checking email ... most of which can be happily performed with a 7-8 year old operating system.

Note the price of old Windows 7 installation disks on Amazon is higher then a cost of new Windows 10 ...

>Workmates have 2017 Dell corporate laptops. And they do lose an hour out of their morning or afternoon when Windows 10 decides to update, often unexpectedly.

If they're running a corporate version of Win10, the corporation should have taken charge of updates, that's one of the advantages of a corporate version of Windows.

Here, our corporate versions of Win10 update when instructed, and give users a 24 hour notice period, and schedule all installations to start not before 6pm (local) and not after 6am (local). I've never had one problem.

Similarly, at home, I have set my work hours, and I get notified when the machine has updates to install, I've never had the machine just announce a reboot. All the folk who have control suddenly taken off them need to RTFM .

"And they do lose an hour out of their morning or afternoon when Windows 10 decides to update, often unexpectedly."

They do get the option to refuse the install repeatedly until a time of their choosing. Or if they don't it's because that is corporate policy.

"often unexpectedly"

That sir, is bollocks.

There are plenty of warnings, I've deferred updates for months on end because I was too busy.