With Windows 10, Microsoft doubles down on forced updates and reboots (save your work!)

I thought that was only to enterprises under contract.

If you say so. Actually having worked at Microsoft within the Windows group, I think you’re both mischaracterizing and underestimating the difficulty of the task. Microsoft would love to not make users reboot. They have talked about it as a problem since before XP came out. It is a huge pain point and they know it.

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All versions with SP1- after that it’s the enterprise only contracts. It would be a brave move to end updates for 50% of the installed desktop market.

I still prefer 7 when I run Windows.

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The usability as come a LONG way in the last while. If I were setting up a computer for a grand-mother with no/little computer experience so she could do basic things, it would be Ubuntu over Windows. The hardest part is that you are using different programs and you don’t know what they are called.

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Change your “Active Hours”

hmmm. then maybe we’ve met.

You worked in Windows at Microsoft? Then you should already know the things I said…

i was trying not to use the appeal of authority – saying, i have done such and such and therefore i know better. when people trot out those kinds of arguments, it means the conversation is done. they’ve closed themselves off from discussion.

engineering is difficult, there’s no doubt about it. but to simply say “this is hard” – especially when there are in fact other systems, and applications that do it better – is overly dismissive. most of what software engineers do is incredibly difficult, and that’s never stopped people before.

what microsoft the company does in fact say is that end users have to deal with the current state of things. what they could say is “we hear your pain. making sure that users don’t lose work and aren’t blocked from accessing their computer while using our operating system is our second highest priority after security. we will work non-stop until we have solutions.”

it’s a choice they are making how to deal with things. they have been successful despite their user’s experiences and troubles. i am sure they will continue to be successful in the future despite the continuing pain. as you say, it’s been going on since xp, and even earlier than that.

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Vista or 7?

Well, now I’ve got a new thing to dread in the event I ever have to use Windows 10 - the active hours thing is a non-starter for me, I have a sleeping disorder and my waking hours constantly change. Just because my work happens at a different time every day doesn’t make it any less important that I not get interrupted/lose my progress at random.

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So systems that are out of support or going out of support and which won’t get security updates anymore at a certain more immediate point. Sounds like a great plan.

Everything I read about Windows 10 makes me more certain that my decision to wipe it from my new laptop and install 7 over it last year was the right decision.

I will have to pester the companies that write the software I use, to ask them to support it under Linux. Some of them have already done this.

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While you can define ‘active time’ when a restart won’t happen (supposedly), you cannot define more than twelve hours. So, for example, if you are a freelancer who often works from whenever they get up (say 8 or 9 AM) until midnight or so, forget defining your actual active hours!

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Unfortunately those updates will often kill the install outright (see black screen of death).

The other thing people could do is be fucking proactive. I have a security bulletin in my RSS feed and tend to go oh look gonna be patch day coming up then will actually check if the updates are available rather than wait.
Also as far as active hours and reboots, With win10 home more than once I have left the machine locked (not sleeping) overnight and logged in to a dialog box of need to reboot that had been sitting there for more than awhile in the morning.

I am with @enso here. While I don’t do security work I did know some of the security guys where I used to work and more than once had to deal with the fallout of the engineers (who should fucking know better) not securing their workstation or postponing updates. Sorry man spending a weekend restoring fucktons of data is not my idea of fun and if fixing that means forcing the end users to have an extra coffee break while their pc reboots that is just peachy fine with me.

For years people have beat up MS for their security and they started taking it seriously but sadly the end users still didn’t by turning off patching/updates and did such a good job of spreading botnets and worms and making me do things like get up at 2am get dressed and head to the data center to gank the network cables and power down an infected server.

Sorry you have to deal with mandatory patching but you all (well not the people here really) brought it on yourselves and while I find it mildly annoying it beats the alternative so y’all can fucking lump it.

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The bottom line is it shouldn’t reboot without making damn sure you’re ready. Coming into work with a freshly rebooted machine or having my machine reboot when I’m in the middle of work is immensely frustrating. If Windows had the ability to not lose your state like MacOS it would be far less bothersome.

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You don’t get out much at all, do you? Audacity is an audio studio software used by many (including a church I worked for) and is designed as Linux first. I know I recorded a d edited on Linux.

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I’m pretty sure he’s referring to A/V work as a whole, not just like ‘I edited some audio files whee’ like Audicity is for. Good software, sure, but it’s not really like ‘A/V work’.

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Totes ready to assume that yes, professionals are upgrading to Windows Server 2012r2 at $300/yr. and going along with the chicken-sacrifice ritual that also explains the urban farming boom.

And yeah, the windowsy bits in distrowatch Debian sectors, give or take a little local biz. hardening and repo mirroring juice. (Or note Israel’s insistence that for their version of EMEA Windows they insist on a few fixes. UAE like to order a ‘same.’ Nigeria skipped on their insistence on a localization, and just look…well, there it is. Almost no Mossad there but 4 out of 5 people want to be entrepreneurs.) Fedora 25 is evidently lovely down to the LVMs.

Which edges would you like to bleed from today(Y/N/A/S/E)? https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/09/21/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-14931-for-pc/

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