El Reg reports
Microsoft has at last revealed the date when its second major update to Windows 8.1 will ship to customers: never.
Despite months of speculation that the software giant has been planning to push out another major update roll-up for its latest OS this year, much like it did with the oddly named Windows 8.1 Update in April, Redmond mouthpiece Brandon LeBlanc blogged on Tuesday that we can forget it.
"Rather than waiting for months and bundling together a bunch of improvements into a larger update as we did for the Windows 8.1 Update, customers can expect that we'll use our already existing monthly update process to deliver more frequent improvements along with the security updates normally provided as part of 'Update Tuesday'", LeBlanc wrote.
That's right, it's "Patch Tuesday" no more. As surely as if those two words were never spoken, LeBlanc has changed the name of Microsoft's monthly dump of security fixes to "Update Tuesday", meaning we can expect new features to show up along with our critical patches from now on.
"Examples of some of these non-security updates are the Windows Store Refresh in May and the June update to OneDrive to improve your control of sync", LeBlanc said.
"Some of these improvements might be more visible or even new features, while others might be more 'behind-the-scenes' that improve things like the performance and reliability of your device."
The latter, we suspect, would be the kind of updates that fix bugs. But let's not dwell on the negative.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Wednesday August 06 2014, @05:50PM
After doing a few Windows installs for people recently, I can understand why people disable it. I always thought it was slow because I only run Windows in VMs. No, it's slow on really fast hardware. There are also many reboots, and it generally seems to require installing updates, rebooting, installing more updates, rebooting, etc. It's a little shocking that people put up with it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:04PM
I've talked to endusers about these issues and
1) Security is someone elses workplace goal. I have a metric to squirt out 10 TPS report header changes per week and nothing at all about security, and if the change breaks anything it'll take IT days to weeks to fix.
2) They shouldn't ship broken software so I shouldn't have to update it, so I won't. Crazy as it sounds some users actually think that way. Its kinda weird. Its along the lines of "The bank wouldn't offer me a loan they know I can't pay back, would they?"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:23PM
Agreed, I recently came across a free three year old laptop in great condition that I planned to give to my in-laws to replace their dead Windows ME machine I had installed Linux Mint on. The owner had reset the laptop to it's default windows 7 install and I thought it'd be easier if I just run the updates and give it to the in-laws as is. It took me over a week of starting up, updating, shutting down to get all the updates done. Then I gave it to the in-laws and was asked two weeks later to put Linux Mint back on it for them, since they don't like windows anymore.
*face palm* should have just done that in the first place.
I can't blame them, I was making almost weekly trips at one point to fix their machine when it had windows ME on it. I was formatting it every other month and eventually I just threw Mint on it in a fit of rage, but it turns out after about a week they actually liked Mint. It did what they needed, it was clean and easy to use and it wasn't getting infected every other day. Which, as it turns out, was my sister in-laws fault. She was a big bearshare torrent user who couldn't seem to tell the difference between an MP4/MPEG movie and an EXE, she also didn't care about f-ing things up since it wasn't her machine. So we just left Mint on it and they used it until just a few months ago. I should have cleaned it out more often, when I took the case cover off it was just a big block of dust inside, which I suspect was the reason it finally died.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tynin on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:28PM
I'm using Windows 7 and beyond the initial patching, I don't think I've experienced a double reboot. I also use Fedora 20, and run a yum update about once a month, which has hundreds of patches, and it takes as long as Windows does to patch everything up. I'm sort of indifferent, it is just routine patching. Kick it off, grab a coffee, check soylentnews and by then it should be done.
(Score: 2) by emg on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:49PM
I've seen Windows 7 install crap after a reboot, and then reboot again. I'm just glad I have an SSD now.
I suspect the big issue is that it trashes the crap out of the disk whenever it installs the simplest of updates, so if you have a physical hard drive, it takes fifteen minutes. And then reboots, which takes another five.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tynin on Wednesday August 06 2014, @08:01PM
Trashing the disk indeed. I've no idea of what a normal number of files Windows would patch, but given that it needs to look at what has been already patched in the past, and what version it is running now, to determine what patches to take, I imagine it is looking through 10's of thousands of files. So building the list of ~50k files to patch, getting meta data and historical info on that many files, with a 9ms seek time per file on your standard desktop HDD, you are looking at 7min 30sec of time just seeking to build the list of files to update, and another 7min 30sec of seeking to the files to update them. Right there alone is reason enough to upgrade to an SSD. Perhaps that is why Windows Updates haven't bothered me for a while.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:49PM
The problem is not really the patching, it's the parts that need to run before it shuts down, or while it's starting up. With Linux I can keep working. I see people frequently do a dirty shutdown with Windows because they need to leave and can't wait for it. Patches are good, it's just that their mechanism for delivering and installing them sucks compared to Linux, which is silly because it's *just* for the MS components. They should have the smoothest update process around.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:52PM
Ah yes, the patching before it shuts down. I forgot that little gem. It has held me up at work because if I'm oncall, I'd prefer to not allow the auto-patcher to kick off and leave my box in an unknown state. So of course I waited till the end of the day to patch only to end up with the shutting down to patch bit... and you are left thinking, is it really shutting down? Or will it just reboot? Crap I have to wait!
Thanks for the reminder. I am much happier with Linux in this regard.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @02:55PM
Shouldn't it be fine to just cut power while it's on the BIOS screen during the reboot cycle? Or is this one of those newfangled "we never actually shut down, just suspend and then act surprised when you turn off the power" ones?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tynin on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:21PM
That's the thing, you fire off Windows Update, you wait while it does its thing, then it "finishes", but isn't finished. It asked to shutdown to finish patching files it couldn't get a lock on. Even when you then select "Reboot", it drops you to a screen saying something to the effect of "Shutting down, Installing Patch, Do not power off". I think it does actually reboot if you tell it to reboot, but the screen clearly says it is patching and shutting down.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:50PM
Yeah, I mean after that part. Once it finishes applying the patch and cycles the CPU, you end up back at the boot screen. At that point, nothing should have survived in memory from the previous session so cutting power shouldn't be able to destroy any data. Then you boot it up later and it resumes the post-reboot patching process (at least up through Windows 7).
IIRC you also have the option to shutdown without applying updates sometimes?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @05:52PM
Oh. Yeah, you can't tell whether it's going to reboot because it still says "Shutting down..." even when you select reboot. Just have to trust it I guess.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mrider on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:04PM
Install an old copy of Win7 fresh on a machine and then start it up and watch what happens. You don't see double reboots because you've been getting patches all along. The double reboot happens when one patch needs to complete before the next can even begin.
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 2) by mrider on Wednesday August 06 2014, @08:12PM
/me -1 (next time read the post more carefully).
Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"
Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."
(Score: 1) by jcm on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:02PM
I experienced that recently, when reinstalling my computer with Windows 7 pre SP.
The update took 3 hours, between downloading 1 gigabyte of updates and rebooting around 10 times (with new updates appearing after every reboot).
I even had some updates that failed to install at the first try, do Microsoft really test their updates ?
Did I mention that I have a slow connection and no SSD ?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by AlHunt on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:55PM
"Surprise" reboots always piss me off. Windows starts it's update thing in the background while I'm working foreground. Somehow I miss the window telling me we"re going to reboot in 15 minutes ... and suddenly the damn thing is closing all my programs and shutting down and there's nothing to stop it.
I know, I could disable it. Probably should. Might even do it now that I'm thinking about it. The next time I turn on a windows machine.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday August 07 2014, @11:54PM
A long time ago on /. I was advised to turn off automatic updates and wait at least three days to install them manually. The point was to look for problems with the latest update. I missed out on the Win7 debacle when the patch actually crashed computers with a certain configuration.
I happily never found out if my computer would of been problematic or not.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:22PM
Give us more money for less.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday August 06 2014, @06:24PM
Small incremental changes do not cause front-page negative reviews about missing features and poor usability.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GlennC on Wednesday August 06 2014, @07:31PM
...breakage to your third-party Start Menu fixes.
You know, the usual! :)
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acharax on Wednesday August 06 2014, @08:17PM
So they've chosen to jump on that new bandwagon of attaching security and bug fixes to "features" nobody would want to have otherwise. Good to know.
Wait, actually that isn't new, I recall they did the same thing with those backdoor capabilities they slapped into WMP many moons ago, but my memory may be deceiving me on the matter.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday August 07 2014, @12:05AM
Sort of like the infamous practice of including riders [wikipedia.org] in legislation. Like how a senator sneakily inserted a provision [washingtonpost.com] to block net neutrality into an unrelated bill for military and veteran construction projects. In the same way, you have to install this patch that fixes several major zero-day bugs already being exploited in the wild, which also introduces an NSA back door and soul-sucking DRM along with the fixes. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to a line item veto when it comes to patches like that.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday August 07 2014, @01:42AM
I wsa going to ask why NSA would need another back door, but nevermind.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 07 2014, @03:01PM
Except isn't the line item veto no longer a thing either? They found it unconstitutional.
Repeatedly voting down perfectly good bills that have abhorrent, completely unrelated riders is one form of government shutdown I could really get behind until they stopped fucking doing that. Except the Republicans seem all too eager to play chicken these days so they'd probably just start doing it to every single bill they didn't want to see pass...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 07 2014, @12:30AM
So you need some work done by the next hour and the update changes something in some interface? Have fun learning from the docs since googling recently introduced stuff will be hard. What if some feature gets removed, as every major OS seems to do lately, (f*ck android and some Linux DEs too)?
I guess MS wants to ditch windows, and switch to a linux based OS. Many bucks saved in development for them and egg on face of Win fanbois. A win-win for everybody.
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