back to article Windows 10 1809: Now arriving on a desktop near you (if you want it)

Windows 10 October 2018 update is here, having skipped past the Release Preview phase, and can be downloaded now if you can’t wait for it to make an automatic appearance. Windows 10 1803 screenshot Click to enlarge While many observers (us included) expected a release date for Windows 10 to be secreted among the hardware …

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  1. iron Silver badge

    "Switched on by default is a useful clipboard history, which will stash plain text, HTML and small images and is accessible by hitting the Windows key and ‘V’. Sometimes the little things can be the most welcome."

    Yeah very useful when I go looking for passwords people have copy & pasted from Keypass et al.

    1. Sixtysix
      Flame

      I'd like to pass please Bob....

      Quite - this remembering of C&P was one of the first things I turned off in whichever version of Office came with similar features.

      Insecurity by rote.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Dominic Shields

      Mine was switched off by default but on enabling it I found it far less useful than the utility 3D Clipboard I have used for years - completely accept the security loophole thing but you can clear it when you like and get it to clear on closedown.

  2. mark l 2 Silver badge

    No doubt it will probably tie my PC for the best part of a day to get this 'feature update' so I will continue to mark my WIFI network as metered to get just security updates and stick with the last years Autumn update until the support runs out for that and I am forced to take the feature upgrades.

    I suspect, as my desktop PC is getting on a bit now (2009) it won't be long before MS claim that it won't be able to support a future Windows 10 update and I will either be forced to buy a new PC to keep Windows up to date. Or more likely I will just delete the Windows install and go to fully Linux Mint on the machine as I only boot into Windows about once a week as it is.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Linux

      "I only boot into Windows about once a week as it is."

      looks like it's time to move your windows schtuff into a VM, hosted on Linux. Yeah, system backups will be easier (in virtualbox, "export appliance" - so simple!)

      1. big_D Silver badge

        @bombastic bob agreed, dual booting is usually a waste fo time, you end up rarely using it and it is a real pain. Unless you have some sort of technical need (games, old hardware that "hits the metal" (which is unlikely with Windows 10)), there is rarely a need to dual-boot these days.

        I do it the other was round, I have a Windows 10 PC with half a dozen different Linux VMs running under Hyper-V. But using Xen or KVM on Linux would be my preferred way of going forward, or at the outside, shudder, VirtualBox.

    2. jelabarre59

      No doubt it will probably tie my PC for the best part of a day to get this 'feature update' so I will continue to mark my WIFI network as metered to get just security updates and stick with the last years Autumn update until the support runs out for that and I am forced to take the feature upgrades.

      Yeah, looks like's already time to once again disable the 'Windows Update' service on my brother's W10 machine in the Catskills (on a sub-1mbit DSL line). I'll put the mega-"update" on it probably in Dec or Jan, the next time he brings the machine down this way. Otherwise the update will completely hang and fubar the system when it *tries* (and fails) to update.

    3. Gordon 11

      No doubt it will probably tie my PC for the best part of a day...

      My laptop has 16GB of memory and an SSD - it's pretty fast. It still took ~3.5 hours to update (I wasn't doing anything on the system other than watching it...) after the download started.

      What are these updates doing for all that time?

      1. Jason Hindle

        "My laptop has 16GB of memory and an SSD - it's pretty fast. It still took ~3.5 hours to update"

        My ThinkPad X1 Carbon took less than an hour. This morning I will kick it off on my Surface 3. Could be a long day.

        1. MrNigel

          Timeout

          Took 54 mins on my 4 year old SP3. Who cares?

          1. onefang

            Re: Timeout

            "Took 54 mins on my 4 year old SP3. Who cares?"

            Took two hours on the laptop I was using this morning. I care, coz I wanted to boot the thing into Linux to get some work done, instead I was left staring into space and twiddling my thumbs.

            This is another case where dual booting is preferred to running VMs. It's not my laptop, the people that own it expect it to boot into Windows, the Linux stuff I was doing this morning is rather memory intensive, and there's not that much memory on the laptop. So no room to run a VM.

        2. Jason Hindle

          “My ThinkPad X1 Carbon took less than an hour. This morning I will kick it off on my Surface 3. Could be a long day.”

          Wasn't as bad as I was expecting given the Surface 3’s well known limitations. Upgrade started at 07:15 and completed shortly after 10:00.

      2. TheGreatCabbage

        My Surface Pro 3 and desktop both did it in under an hour. Not sure why your laptop took so long...

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. big_D Silver badge

      I upated 3 machines yesterday, a Skylake HP Spectre x360, a Ryzen 7 desktop and a Lenovo Thinkpad T480. The installation runs in the background and didn't affect my use of the machine, that took about 40 minutes for preparing, downloading and installing. The restart took around 10 minutes on each.

  3. djstardust

    Hmmmm

    And it will automagically reverse all your security settings and make "Edge" the default browser again.

    No thanks.

    I bought my GPD pocket with Win10 on it last year. It worked perfectly out of the box so I totally disabled windows update and it's been perfect ever since.

    Apparently the last update killed some of them completely so better safe than sorry and all that.

    1. richardcox13

      Re: Hmmmm

      Didn't here (work PC updated overnight).

      And working fine. Dark theme extends to Explorer now (nice).

      A couple of reports of some firewall rules being disabled but that didn't impact me either!

      I never seem to have problems with these updates... what am I doing wrong?

      1. MysteryGuy

        Re: Hmmmm

        > I never seem to have problems with these updates... what am I doing wrong?

        I've had the opposite experience where something almost always got broken on update.

        It got to where I would curse whenever I suddenly got the 'We're about to make windows better' chirpy pop-up announcing that it was about to (very likely) ruin my day...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmmmm

        "what am I doing wrong?" Being a sycophant?

      3. BobChip
        Linux

        Re: Hmmmm - updates

        (work PC updated overnight) - and found the process markedly faster than the April 2018 Update – less than an hour from start to finish.

        One (more) reason why I use Linux.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmmm

      It didn't reverse any settings here - all the options to block "apps" and protect privacy were set to do so before the update from 1803, then remained so after the update to version 1809. I cannot speak for the default browser part. But even if so, no biggie.

    3. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Hmmmm

      All my privacy settings remain correctly set (i.e. don't provide any information).

      Interestingly, when you start Edge after the update (Firefox was still my default browser), it appologised that the 3rd party cookie tracking option was leaky prior to the update, but it is all okay now.

    4. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Hmmmm

      My home machine updated yesterday. It didn't change my default browser.

      Weirdly I've not had any problems with Win10 updates, despite my home machine being made up of a collection of parts that are slowly rotated over a period of years, and the OS having been upgraded-in-place since Vista (thru 7, 8, 8.1 and finally 10). Really I should be having more issues than I do.

  4. Huw D

    Tried it. It broke LMI Rescue Technicians console.

    Back to 1803 until I can work out what's going on.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      https://beta.logmeinrescue.com/UK/account/login

      Head to the beta site and download the latest Tech console - 7.12.3325 (64-bit)

      Enjoy!

      1. Huw D

        Why, thank you very much AC!

  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "there isn’t a lot in it"

    Well whaddya you know, maybe this time Microsoft will manage to not break something.

    Maybe.

    In any case, I'm no longer on the sidelines because my wife now has a work laptop with Windows 1 0 that I am desperately trying to find the way to properly lock down. It's a "clean" system, in that it has obviously been wiped and reinstalled, so I am hoping that I can stay ahead of the rot and stop the creep.

    Windows Update has been disabled, of course. I'll enable that every now and then, for the security updates, and that will be all.

    1. djstardust

      Re: "there isn’t a lot in it"

      Don't worry, Windows Update will re-enable itself every week or so on it's own!

    2. EnviableOne

      Re: "there isn’t a lot in it"

      local group policy editor is your friend, go mine locked down and configured to not allow most stuff.

    3. eldakka

      Re: "there isn’t a lot in it"

      In any case, I'm no longer on the sidelines because my wife now has a work laptop with Windows 1 0 that I am desperately trying to find the way to properly lock down.

      Is your wife self-employed, a contractor or similar? Otherwise, why is it your problem?

      1. wallaby

        Re: "there isn’t a lot in it"

        "Is your wife self-employed, a contractor or similar? Otherwise, why is it your problem?"

        Agreed, in most companies letting the employees partner (or anyone outside the company) mess about with how the PC is set up is grounds for a disciplinary, in some companies switching off updates where a PC doesn't receive a security update could be construed as gross misconduct.

      2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: why is it your problem?

        My wife is an elementary school teacher here in France. If you think the Education Nationale has on-call IT techs for hardware issues, I have news for you my friend.

        Nobody cares about the equipment, nobody knows why the WiFi isn't working and if a reboot doesn't do the trick, the computers stay unused until such time as I walk in to check what is (or isn't) going on. If I get the things working again, everyone will be happy until it all goes pear-shaped again a few weeks later.

        The younger, new teacher generation isn't all that better because now they've grown up on mobile and skipped the formative years of faffing around on school equipment or a home PC.

        But there is light at the end of the tunnel : my wife is planning on retiring in four years. So I have at most four more years of school IT support to bear, and then I'll be done with it.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: why is it your problem?

          It's the same in UK (or at least England) for most primary schools. Some have a local authority IT guy who may get there to sort things out. It depends on the cost and quality of the contract since it's usually outsourced by the LA. Cheaply. And that's an improvement from what it was when I started teaching in the 80s. I got back into doing computery stuff having been an amateur tinkerer previously because there was no one else doing it. I assisted and took over from a deputy head when he got promoted. Training local schools to use their newly arriving PCs. And the situation didn't improve for over a decade - but the number of computers increased dramatically. And even today most schools ( this is where I started this comment) will wait a long time for something to get fixed if there is no scheduled visit.

          1. Korev Silver badge

            Re: why is it your problem?

            I used to live with a primary school teacher in the UK, the situation is exactly as you describe. IIRC they had someone come on for half a day per week, which included working on the "server". I used to fix things on her laptop and "smart board" as they'd never get sorted otherwise.

            1. Terry 6 Silver badge

              Re: why is it your problem?

              Yup.Plenty of classrooms with non-working smartboards because the Devils Brew of connecting a laptop, smartboard, projector, speakers, network and assorted sockets is just made to be high maintenance and education doesn't have funding for maintenance. ( Or even to replace the sodding bulbs when they go).

              And then there is the matter of the kids' laptops. 30 machines, with 30 network connections and 30 charge points shared by 120 kids and 4 teachers with 6-8 TAs is just a recipe for device failures.

  6. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Will wait a bit until it get the all-clear from world+dog.

    Also explains why my WSUS server is churning like crazy. Meh.

  7. Marco van de Voort

    pseudo tty's

    Didn't this release have the rearrangement of conshost to support pseudo TTY's and an API for it?

    It was mentioned in the console blog (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/), but I haven't checked the release trajectories myself.

    It could be a new era in console computing :-)

    1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

      Re: pseudo tty's

      It seem you're in luck.

      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/createpseudoconsole

      1. stephanh

        Re: pseudo tty's

        So now we don't need winpty anymore?

  8. Omgwtfbbqtime
    Facepalm

    So its time to manually create a restore point again - and also make sure restore points haven't been disabled again...

  9. LenG

    Not worried for the next 12 months

    There is nothing in this release I want so I will continue my policy of delaying all feature upgrades for the maximum permitted time while the rest of the world tests and debugs them for me.

    1. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

      Re: Not worried for the next 12 months

      "There is nothing in this release I want so I will continue my policy of delaying all feature upgrades for the maximum permitted time while the rest of the world tests and debugs them for me."

      You absolute rebel!

  10. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Windows Update is an oxymoron.

    The phrase always reminds me of "military intelligence" and "act naturally" ... it will shuffle the deck and very little else.

    Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams

    1. the Jim bloke

      Re: Windows Update is an oxymoron.

      "Military Intelligence" is an actual term with a specific use, jumped on by self declared "wits" to elevate themselves at the expense of something that could not care less about their posturing.

      True oxymorons in our current age are "political leadership" and "business ethics"

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hello Welcome To Microsoft 'Onavo'

    "Android users are getting one more superpower with the new Windows update, beyond the Your Phone app. Earlier this year, Microsoft unveiled Timeline, a Windows 10 feature that kept track of which files and webpages you were accessing, and when, so you could figuratively trace your digital steps and find what you were looking for. Now, Android users can install the Microsoft Launcher app, and access that same Timeline, so you can find the website or Office 365 file you wanted."

    __________

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/23/onavo_vpn_pulled_from_ios/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Figuratively trace your digital steps and find what you were looking for'

      More like 'trace your digital steps and find what Microsoft was looking for'.... Tracking how you use your phone to try and stay relevant. Microsoft boss: 'Privacy is a human right' - My A$$!

      _____

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/05/07/privacy-human-right-says-microsoft-boss-satya-nadella/

      1. wallaby

        Re: 'Figuratively trace your digital steps and find what you were looking for'

        "More like 'trace your digital steps and find what Microsoft was looking for'.... Tracking how you use your phone to try and stay relevant. Microsoft boss: 'Privacy is a human right' - My A$$!"

        Tin hats available in aisle 2

    2. Tom 35

      Re: Hello Welcome To Microsoft 'Onavo'

      Timeline... seems to have fallen down the stairs and gotten disabled.

  12. Terry 6 Silver badge

    AHH

    Went to "check for updates" to let it install on one of my machines, the main one, so that I could control the process at a time when it wasn't in use. Glad I did. Update froze at 21%.

    Rebooted and automatic revert. Error message in the history was one of those generic ones that means "something went wrong".

    Typical.

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