Enterprise Windows 10 users, Microsoft has some 'quality' patches coming your way Running Windows 10 in the enterprise? Took the advice of Microsoft when it said the April 2018 Update was ready for the big leagues? You probably want to install last night's "quality improvements". In what is starting to feel a little more frequent than it should, Microsoft pushed out a raft of fixes for the 1803 incarnation …
"until they finally throw in the towel on that Metro UI disaster zone."
ack, but they've already gone and jumped in with both feet, hit the bottom, and started diving deeper with UWP and every OTHER excuse to "not let go" of the "Sinofsky and Larson-Greene" production often known as "The Metro UI".
You'd think they'd acknowledge their mistake and go back, but NOOooo. I guess the 'children in charge' "have decided for us" and we'll keep their lipstick-on-the-non-oinky-end-of-the-boar indefinitely, as it is now UNDEAD and can't be beaten to death any more. And THEY like it, so WE MUST AS WELL! [or they'll forcibly insert it into a body orifice for our own good]
"that's the rocking-horse-poo LTSB version"
Someone didnt RTFM. LTSB is very specially not for standard desktops (defined as anything that runs MS Office) and Office Proplus 2019 wont run on it, and from 2019 O365 wont run on it either. CBB is the way to go.
Actually, not having Office running on it is probably one more reason to use it.
The current version is dated 2016 which feels a bit long in the tooth. Although it's expressly not for desktop use I expect the 2018 version to allow for Office to run.
I'll continue to use a mix of iCloud and Office online in any case.
The eternal problem of how to test outside of production, just in case everything gets borked whilst needing testing to be done in production, where the real data resides...
* Sandboxing wont help because the data is usally on another device.
* Complete and exact copies of production environments are almost impossible to keep up to date without having the budget of MS behind you.
* Some of these bugs are only for extremely rare cases and would be damned hard to test without spending the entire IT budget on testing.....
And these are only the OS bugs, when we add O365 into the affaire then things really
become fun....not.
Sighs in despair as IT never seems to evolve, it just repeats Ad Infinitum..
As someone who has used Microsoft for OS and other applications pretty much since day 1, I have to wonder what is going on.
It is as though they have split every function out to separate teams and they have each gone their own way with no communication between teams. So many changes and 'improvements' that nearly do what was intended. Updates that nearly fix faults and bug fixes which also kill minor functions or introduce new bugs and an overall plan that...OK so no overall plan then.
It is made worse because even though the alternatives are quite good, they have their own problems either through price (Apple) or else from a lack of the slightly niche applications (Linux) used by the people who would then sing Hosannahs for their liberation from Windows
I had mostly moved away from Windows but only by keeping a VM running for those oddities and using a console for gaming but I have been drifting back because while I can keep Windows 7 going it is just so much more convenient even though it means I have weird things happen every once in a while.
Is this a failing of OS developers or is it just that we demand more from a simple PC than it is able to supply in one box?
"Is this a failing of OS developers or is it just that we demand more from a simple PC than it is able to supply in one box?" Only Slurp, others seem to grasp users prefer stability over featuritis. Also, even Arch Linux (a true rolling release) and derivatives try to ship a minimal usable installation to users. Arch updates are not attempting to add features just because even if the packages are near the bleeding edge.
I remember a time in the days of windows 3.1 and up to 98/Me where updates were simply not required.
The latest version of the OS fixed issues and applied new features, sometimes MS would release the odd exe to patch this or that but basically you just went with what you had. Sure win 2000 ended up with about 3 or 4 service packs but back then I think there was much more effort put into getting it right as much as possible before release.
Updates obviously are required to patch security issues in an online world but many of these updates are fixing bugs in functionality or introducing new bugs when fixing the existing bugs.
This simply seems too strange to be true. We started with releases of windows that did not get updates so were presumably heavily tested (on a functional level at least) before leaving the door. Once XP came out and allowed MS to patch on the fly we ended up with bugs squashed and security holes fixed to the point that XP became one of the most secure platforms due to its maturity. Win 7 got much the same but since them we have been going downhill with unfinished, untested, freshly compiled code being rushed out to beta test on us lusers.
You can tell something is up when you see "preview" security updates coming through. Preview?? WTF give me the final update!
I started my IT career as a Software Tester. When I was a software tester I was determined to not let the code out until I knew and could prove that my real world test files, regression tests, hardware tests etc showed no reproducible issues. I even had an old Pentium 2 machine under the desk running at 200MHz. This was really useful as it was frequently the only machine that could show bugs caused by timing errors due to its slow speed!
When I let the code out, some of it would exhibit a bug due to a real world file coming along that happened to break something. Yes I tested the patches but we certainly did not end up in a mess where:
1. Updates are rushed out to updates that created bugs
2. The update mechanism itself breaks itself while installing its updated from a fresh install (I fresh installed win 10 and win update killed itself requiring a re-install and luck to get it working again)
3. We didnt release previews of updates. Previews were something you watched on TV
4. We didnt add new functionality outside of a proper upgrade. When it was released it had been tested and didnt need updates 2 weeks after release to fix a situation where it was unusable.
5. All our developers talked together, ate pizza together and basically knew what has going on with everything on at least a high level.
@DuncanLarge: "I remember a time in the days of windows 3.1 and up to 98/Me where updates were simply not required"
Well, to be fair, in the Windows 3,1 days, very few people were Internet connected, and iirc, Win95 didn't install tcp/ip by default, and Win '98 had,... four Service Packs?
So the risk escalated over that period, and OSs got more complex, so we get more patches. Having said that, I wish MS wouldn't bundle new features into the update cycle, I'd rather Paint3D etc were just store apps, which we could deploy if required, rather than having to turn a bunch of stuff off with each new build.
there was a time when Micro-shaft actually (seemed to) CARED what the customers wanted, and NOT merely "herd them" into a lock-in to whatever THEY decide to excrete.
that was back in the Windows '98, NT 4, and Win 2k days, for sure. XP too, for the most part, up until the ".Net" initiative. After that, everything went awry. Micro-shaft's attitude about customers and the direction of their company slowly changed to what it is today.
/me points out: Change is NOT always a good thing. When change is for the WORSE, it's sometimes called "rotting"
In the Win '95 beta program I had a lot of online conversations with MS engineers over features, performance, and so on. I'd like to think I had an influence over the quality and perception of the UI and the software that was bundled wtih Win '95. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't as bad as it COULD have been... and they were pretty cooperative and even mailed me a replacement CD ROM drive [I sent them mine so they could figure out why it wasn't working, even with the DOS drivers]. THAT is how they USED to do things.
Amen to single patches. The CUs the last two months for Server 2016 (1607) were 1.2 gigs, and it's looking like they'll just keep getting larger every month from now until EoL for this version.
And before everyone starts yelling "deltas, deltas", they were "only" 560megs the last two months, so it's still a big update. And speaking of deltas... The deltas you apply this month will likely screw up the updates for next month. I had a paid ticket open with MS last month to fix this very issue, and the MS tech strongly recommended I stay away from deltas going forward - full CUs only. So I get to look forward to massive patches every month that take 30 minutes to install and another 15 after reboot before you even get to a login prompt. And maybe they'll even work. Joy.
My issue is the lack of security/privacy in the Windows 10 consumer versions up to/and including Pro being infected with Microsoft's version of Google's data snatching in Android. I can guarantee you that state governments are running the consumer versions, so now we have the public's state/federally required private data being uploaded to Microsoft's servers - how good do you feel about that?
Me, I'm starting a crusade in my corner of government, which includes those boring elections politicians like to cry about but not do anything proactive to secure. I've got one state behind me and I'm sure I'll get more... Seriously, I'm going to scream like a stuck pig until the Enterprise edition is made available to government & small business without a volume license etc - I'm tired of this bullshit and I've got nothing better to do except be a total pain in the ass until I get this accomplished.
Don Quixote or just dumbass? Cuz, I'm doing it anyway ;)
No clouds, no subscriptions... Yes, going against Microsoft's current business model and I'll use every tool available to force the issue.
I dare a politician to take up for Microsoft, I will expose them to be bought-and-paid-for fools - because I can and am very good at finding information that does not want to be found.
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