Windows new service update!

[AGA]

Again, that comes down to trying to prevent as many of their users as possible from making the wrong decision.  The problem is solved on page one of that thread, I'd assume the rest is people who believe what you do complaining about being made to do something slightly technical to get what they want.

Bear in mind though that Microsoft is an American company.  Not even Bill Gates can afford a million Americans suing him because he made is easy for them to compromise the integrity of their computer!

[Cassiebsg]

Uhm, am I wrong, or in all those years that MS had that option in win7, nobody sued it claiming they "made  it easy for them to compromise the integrity of their computer!"

Also, the guy complains the service just gets re-enabled on page 1.
There seems to be a solution on page 2 though, but haven't read all to figure out if it still works or MS has "fixed it".

[Blondbraid]

Uhm, am I wrong, or in all those years that MS had that option in win7, nobody sued it claiming they "made  it easy for them to compromise the integrity of their computer!"

True that!

I miss Windows 7...

[Danvzare]

Again, that comes down to trying to prevent as many of their users as possible from making the wrong decision.  The problem is solved on page one of that thread, I'd assume the rest is people who believe what you do complaining about being made to do something slightly technical to get what they want.

Bear in mind though that Microsoft is an American company.  Not even Bill Gates can afford a million Americans suing him because he made is easy for them to compromise the integrity of their computer!

Hmm. I disagree. I wouldn't be surprised if they've claimed that's the reason. But I don't believe that is the actual reason. Especially as Cassie said, no one was ever sued before.
If I had to take a guess, I think it's because they want more control over their product.

[WHAM]

If I had to take a guess, I think it's because they want more control over their product.

Could well be true, and it'd make sense too. As someone who works for a software company, I know first hand how much of a pain in the arse it can be to try and provide support for a wide range of old versions, when you have a number of users simply refusing to upgrade to newer versions out of sheer stubbornness. Funnily enough, people still expect their software to work, even if they don't do anything to maintain it, which makes just as much sense as expecting your car to work if you never take it in for maintenance. It will keep working, until it won't. And when some old version ends up failing as other software running parallel with it change too much, one can only guess where the finger of blame on the forums and tech support sites ends up pointing again.

There is a lot to be said about having as much of the userbase running the same version, preferably the latest one.

[deadsuperhero]

The question is, why wouldn't you do that? You're supposed to keep Windows up-to-date, like any other app or OS.
Just turn on automatic updates.

This. Unless one is working with a pay-per-megabit internet connection, I never understood why some people avoid software updates.

Part of the problem is laziness, but a larger part of the issue is...compatibility breaks. For example, in the macOS world, it's not entirely uncommon for entire applications to break because core APIs have seemingly suddenly changed. despite the effort of app developers to track changes from one beta release of an OS to the next.

[WHAM]

Huh, I wasn't aware that sort of thing was still a major issue in the Mac world.
Gotta hand it to Microsoft in this area, they've been doing some miraculous work when it comes to ensuring backwards compatibility.

The fact that you can still run stuff from the very first versions of Windows in Windows 10 is impressive, if not all that practical in most cases.

[Blondbraid]

Might as well post this:

[fire7side]

I had an update about a year ago and after it was finished it took about 7 minutes to boot up.  I checked the internet, tried a few options which didn't work, then took the last one which was a reset.  I lost all my installed software but none of my personal files.  Worked like a charm.  Boots up fast and a lot of that old software wasn't being used anyway so it didn't get reinstalled.

[Khris]

I had a bad experience once where after a bigger update a Win 10 laptop absolutely refused to recognize the touchpad. I had to revert it to basic mode in the BIOS settings, meaning it was usable again to point and click but I could no longer scroll with two fingers and the like. Very annoying if you take it over to the couch without an external mouse and keep trying to scroll and nothing happens.

I spent about two hours trying to fix this and once again cursed the fact that laptop manufacturers put hardware from multiple different companies in one and the same model of laptop and it's up to you to figure out which bluetooth radio, WiFi card or touchpad exactly is in the device in front of you. It still doesn't work to this day. Curiously, I know a second person who owns that exact same laptop, and their updates ran without any touchpad issues

I'm also still puzzled by a UX choice such as this:


What happens if I click that Restart now button? Am I going to break my system? I kind of doubt it but I'm also afraid of trying it.
Something like that should never happen.

And there's still a horrible translation error in the German version of the Update settings, where an on/off option label about restarting the device as soon as possible after a bigger update reads like a request by windows instead. ("Restart the device ..." -> "Starten Sie das Gerät [...] neu ...")

It also looks like when you shutdown your computer in the middle of an update, Windows goes into hibernation instead. This makes sense obviously, but it's not actively communicated in any way.

Long story short: I get people's skepticism about Windows updates. Should you still keep Windows up-to-date? Yes. Should you keep around an old laptop or tablet in case the update fails and your system goes tits up? Also yes.

[WHAM]

It also looks like when you shutdown your computer in the middle of an update, Windows goes into hibernation instead. This makes sense obviously, but it's not actively communicated in any way.

I actually learned about this recently, and wasn't aware: by default Windows has a power option called "fast boot" enabled. What this does in effect is that Windows never actually shuts down, even when you tell it to. It always just goes into hibernate mode and just doesn't tell you about it. I'd always selected "shut down" every evening when I stop using my computer but found out I had several weeks of uptime in my task manager, telling me the OS never actually shut itself down.