back to article Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017

Microsoft is planning two releases of Windows 10 in 2017. The giant has said there will be no new features coming for the rest of 2016, so the plan is for “two additional feature updates” in 2017. Microsoft folded the news inside the overall headline grabber on Windows 10 Anniversary Update on August 2. There were no more …

  1. Alan Sharkey

    Only if it works.....

    It probably won't help most people if my upgrade experience is anything to go by. One system crashed out with an error (ends in 07) When I looked it up, MS were "still investigating". The other one did the upgrade, rebooted twice and reverted to my old Windows 10 with no explanation.

    Both systems are reasonably standard - both were new installs from MSDN media about 9 months ago.

    1. Tom Chiverton 1

      Re: Only if it works.....

      Had the 'no explanation' reboot here. You have to go though some hoops to launch the installer in just the right way so it shows you that acutal error (for me, it meant the anti virus needed uninstalling).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Only if it works.....

        it meant the anti virus needed uninstalling

        A very good anti virus program that because it was doing its job.

    2. alain williams Silver badge

      Re: Only if it works.....

      I have just come back from visiting my sister: her W10 box suddenly started doing an upgrade this morning "it did not even ask me if it was convenient", she can't do anything, the screen had been telling her that the upgrade was 91% complete for many hours.

      "Will Microsoft tell me what to do, how do I ask them ?" I doubt that she will even get the time of day from them. The best that I could suggest was to leave it overnight and force a power cycle if it still at it tomorrow.

      I told her that I had run an update on my laptop earlier, it runs Linux Mint, I continued working while the upgrade took a few minutes to happen in another workspace. She has now agreed that I can install Mint on her old MS-XP laptop - to make it run fast again.

      1. druck Silver badge

        Re: Only if it works.....

        After you get board of looking at 91% for a few days, you'll power cycle the machine, it will then boot back up and say its restoring the previous OS. After another reboot, which will look fine right up until after you log in, you'll find a completely empty black screen with nothing running, not even the task bar. You can ctrl+alt+delete and bring up task manager, and use that to run other things, but that's it. No amount of trying to use Windows 10 boot repair will fix it.

        If you then are contemplating a OS reinstall, make it Linux Mint this time, you wont look back.

  2. Captain Badmouth
    Happy

    Fair play

    It gives you some time to sort out the anniversary bugs before the next lot arrive....

    http://www.infoworld.com/article/3104389/microsoft-windows/the-case-against-windows-10-anniversary-update-grows.html

    1. Kurt Meyer

      Re: Fair play

      @ Captain Badmouth

      Sorted.

  3. Novex
    Meh

    I don't suppose...

    ...either of those updates would include a consumer / small business version without the telemetry and forced updates?

    No, I thought not.

    1. VinceH

      Re: I don't suppose...

      Even if they did put out an update like that, given their recent behaviour would you trust them not to revert in a future update? I wouldn't.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    New Feature List

    Feature update 1

    1) More Telemtery to improve the user experience

    2) Full screen adverts for tat we are wanting to get rid of. Adverts appear if you stop doing something for more than 10mSecs

    Feature Update 2

    1) Even more Telemetry

    2) More Adverts floating all over your screen

    3) Subscriptions invoked $9.99 or £9.99+ VAT a month. To improve the user experience naturally

    1. fidodogbreath

      Re: New Feature List

      A.C, you missed a few.

      4) Remove the already-insufficient controls over telemetry, to improve the user experience.

      5) Force installs of alpha- and beta-quality drivers and updates onto home users, to improve the user experience (of Enterprise customers).

      6) Convert your local account to an M$ account whenever you launch an Office application or log into any M$ web site or service. Every. Single. Time. To enhance the...well, you know.

      7) Install a desktop image of the classic "Ned Beatty vs. the hillbillies" scene from Deliverance, because you have no choice but to accept these updates...and you shore do have a purty smile...

      FTFY

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: New Feature List

        Squee! Squee!

    2. Wade Burchette

      Re: New Feature List

      8) Block any program from installing that was not downloaded through the Microsoft app store, for your protection of course.

  6. Packet

    Intriguing... hopefully, they sort out most/all the issues by then - else it's hello macOS time

    1. nkuk

      It seems you are not alone, I read an article today that said 64% of Windows users would consider switching to a Mac due to Windows 10 privacy concerns : http://www.scmagazineuk.com/67-of-windows-users-in-the-uk-lean-toward-a-swap-to-mac/article/514058/

    2. fidodogbreath

      else it's hello macOS time

      I like MacOS, but I hate that Apple forces you to replace your perfectly good PC with their essentially identical hardware, at 50% higher cost.

      1. Packet

        No denying the hardware is annoyingly (and irritatingly) expensive, but there is a certain higher level of quality (and resale value afterwards) that do help make the pill somewhat less of a bother to swallow.

        Provided one is wiling to live with a lack of freedom in configuration of things like video cards and what not.

        Windows 10 is just making the switch to a mac more compelling (which is unfortunate really, since Windows 7 and prior to that, XP and 2000 and even NT4 have been quite good)

        All this entire extra telemetry, forced updates, removal of features like group policy editing, ugly UI, lack of flow, etc - Microsoft has nobody to blame but themselves.

        1. Johan Bastiaansen

          Windows 7 and prior to that, XP and 2000 and even NT4 have been quite good

          ah yes, we were younger then, weren't we.

          1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

            Re: Windows 7 and prior to that, XP and 2000 and even NT4 have been quite good

            Sadly yes, I also remember NT4/2000 fondly.

            But the rot started with XP and "product activation" for me, the first sign that MS believed they controlled your PC and you now needed permission to repair/change hardware.

      2. TVU Silver badge

        "I like MacOS, but I hate that Apple forces you to replace your perfectly good PC with their essentially identical hardware, at 50% higher cost."

        ...but that's what PC and laptop Hackintoshes are for (and by all accounts they work rather well).

        1. MonkeyCee

          Hackintosh

          Eh, they work OK. Colour is usually a bit off, and wifi can be iffy.

          Getting a hackintosh to work is about as hard as getting linux to work in the early 2000s. Usually pretty fine, and you get 95% of the stuff working OK. Still got a bootable OSX for this box that I haven't used in.... 3 years I think?

          It's quite a lot easier (and far less fussy about hardware) to install some flavor of linux and make it look Mac like.

          Most of the time the extra hardware cost is easy to recoup in either less support costs, or being able to get decent money in a couple of years time selling on old kit.

      3. Frank N. Stein

        Not if you go to macofoalltrades.com and buy a reconditioned Mac. Saved hundreds on mine. Only use Windows computer for Racing SIMS. Everything else is done on my Mac.

      4. Mandoscottie

        @fidodogbreath

        Thats because your buying into lifestyle, not an operating system.......;) you only get what you pay for /S

    3. MJI Silver badge

      Well I have a dual boot PC, a few yours old now as it was built pre win 7, so of course original boot is XP, new boot is a latest version of Linux.

      When XP is unusable (still fine in the real world courtesy of firewall, Windows embedded registry change, and a good AV) I will just go Linux. No point going newer Windows as they keep killing older software.

      I really overspecced the PC (quad core, TB HDDs) and Linux runs as well as XP.

      Everything about 10 puts me off, as long as I can surf web, connect to work, store photos and edit video I will be fine.

      Games, abandoned PC games, not worth keep updating, it runs HL2 very well that is good enough for me.

      Consoles play games well, on the telly, in their own environment. No messing with drivers, no having to use Microsoft and their constant redesigns.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Both my machines failed at the update. Eventually I found a fix online - I had to unplug the ethernet cable just after the updater verified the download. Then it worked, otherwise it failed with the incredibly useful 'Something went wrong' and a hex code. Go figure. The other on virtual box refused to update due to lack of space even though there was enough. I had to burn a dvd and run the update from there then it worked. On my asus skylake system it decided to disable the usb3 driver as incompatible although I have no idea if it is or not.

    One good thing - because I had cortana disabled the update appears to have switched it off ! Long may that continue... They still refuse to make the OS GUI look reasonable to the eye. The file manager is very poor and still is a mass of bright white with no options to change it.

    I only use windows 10 for gaming, and it does appear a bit smoother after the update. Everything else is on linux mint.

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Meh

      They still refuse to make the OS GUI look reasonable to the eye.

      Just to be awkward for a moment* - I actually like the Windows 10 UI. Well, the Desktop part of it at least, not the how-can-so-much-space-contain-so-few-controls TIFKAM parts.

      Any new PCs I set up now get Mint with a Windows 10 theme. Best of both worlds.

      (*) Funny old world, takes all sorts, wouldn't life be dull if we were all the same, etc etc

      1. Luna Tick

        Yea I don't have a problem with the desktop theme either. I actually do like it quite a bit, it's nice and fresh. If only it was uniform everywhere. Pipe-dream. The TIFKAM shit however is like a giant nasty pimple both visually and functionally.

      2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        do you enjoy

        Flogging youself with a dead horse?

        Mint with a Windows 10 skin. Shudder. The word I'm looking for is Masocist. Yep that is it.

        Oh well, at least it is not 'Genuine Windows' underneath.

        1. David 132 Silver badge

          Re: do you enjoy

          Meh, I've been called worse.

          Sometimes even by people who know how to spell complicated polysyllabic words like "masochist".

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: do you enjoy

            "Sometimes even by people who know how to spell complicated polysyllabic words like "masochist"."

            Maybe he was accusing you of being both a masochist and Masonic.

          2. dajames

            Re: do you enjoy

            Sometimes even by people who know how to spell complicated polysyllabic words like "masochist".

            Methinks a better spelling might be "masocyst" -- in reference to the "TIFKAM shit" being "like a giant nasty pimple both visually and functionally", as Luna Tick said, upthread.

        2. Teiwaz

          Re: do you enjoy

          "Flogging youself with a dead horse?

          Mint with a Windows 10 skin. Shudder. The word I'm looking for is Masocist. Yep that is it."

          - Never came across Blue Pup linux then? - Puppy Linux with a Windows 8 tiles look.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Joke

          Re: do you enjoy

          It could be worse, he could be a Mac-oist.

          (A little Apple humour)

    2. K.o.R
      Big Brother

      I'm guessing it's trying to phone home for something and you have all the telemetry domains blocked in the firewall.

    3. Zakhar

      "'Something went wrong' and a hex code. Go figure."

      Indeed, that remembers me when I tried to re-install XP. It said "Error 61034"...

      I had to search the web to discover that means "I/O error on the disk drive" (a floppy disk actually)

      As if they couldn't say it right away! But that is M$ policy, they probably think the end-user is too stupid to understand what "I/O error on the disk drive" means, or has no IT-educated friend that can help him with that. And spitting to the end-user a meaningful message would only make him even more scared.

      They might be actually be right seen the Linux forums where people ask:

      "I typed java, and it does not work, the system says:

      $ java

      The program 'java' can be found in the following packages:

      * default-jre

      * gcj-5-jre-headless

      * openjdk-8-jre-headless

      * gcj-4.8-jre-headless

      * gcj-4.9-jre-headless

      * openjdk-9-jre-headless

      Try: sudo apt install <selected package>

      What should I do????????"

      (Notice the 8 ?)

      Obviously you want to answer: RTFS (RTF Screen)

      So I do understand why M$ is using that error obfuscation policy, but for myself I prefer the Linux self explaining error message, and that was another reason to definitely switch and extinguish W$ on my PCs back then (8 years ago).

      1. DropBear

        "So I do understand why M$ is using that error obfuscation policy"

        Sorry mate, NAVE (Not A Valid Excuse). They still could have started with an error number THEN the wall'o'text, so those that prefer to quote a number over the phone to the tech support guy would be just as happy as those preferring to see instructions to fix the issue themselves.

  8. Bruce Ordway

    Windows 10

    If I were in charge I would certainly hold off on rolling out any more OS "features" for a while.

    I'm so sick of all the direction changes in the Windows OS since version 7.

    After testing 10 I've opted for a new Win 7 system & will worry about 2020 when/if that time comes.

    What can MS do in the short term that will sway any more users like me to its side now?

    For now I think they're stuck it a sort of stalemate with users who have embraced Windows 10 and those who have not.

    1. fidodogbreath

      Re: Windows 10

      For the life of me, I cannot understand why M$ thinks it's OK to remove control over the configuration of production machines. I guess they just assume that only Enterprise Edition customers use their computers for "real work," and the rest of us just play Candy Crush Soda Saga.

      The GWX clusterf-ck may have subsided for the moment, but it still looms large in memory. Many of us fought a year-long battle to keep Win7 boxes from being overrun by the Windows 10 invaders, and by "enhancements" that tried to bring some of the disturbing aspects of 10 into 7.

      After an entire year of fake security updates, deceptive dialog boxes, stealth installs, and the dozens of "re-releases" of crapware like KB3035583, my trust level is at zero.

      Windows 10 users can't block or hide individual updates. When M$ decides to ram something down their throats, there's no battle to fight. The only options are to choke it down, or switch to a different OS. Why would I subject myself to that?

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Windows 10

        'For the life of me, I cannot understand why M$ thinks it's OK to remove control over the configuration of production machines. I guess they just assume that only Enterprise Edition customers use their computers for "real work," and the rest of us just play Candy Crush Soda Saga.'

        Haven't you worked that out? Even if you only use one computer for real work you're supposed to go out and entangle yourself in enterprise-scale licensing and costs. There may be an option coming a little later for a remote desktop terminal install which just signs you in to do all your work on Azure.

      2. Updraft102

        Re: Windows 10

        "I guess they just assume that only Enterprise Edition customers use their computers for "real work," and the rest of us just play Candy Crush Soda Saga."

        I don't think it's about assuming that only enterprise customers do real work with Windows. I think it's more that MS doesn't really care what the rest of us want or do.

        Throughout this entire Windows 10 debacle, I (and many others) have often wondered what MS could possibly be thinking. Are they trying to kill Windows? Is Satya Nadella secretly a Google or Apple plant sent in to eliminate the competition?

        All the while, we've been trying to figure out how Microsoft can so misread the mood of the computing public and do something so incredibly cynical and tone-deaf that it alienates most of their customers to some degree, or at least those who were subject to GWX, forced upgrades, adware, and all of that bad stuff (non-enterprise and non-educational customers).

        A comment over on Infoworld, though, really got me thinking. What if MS really IS trying to kill off Windows (at least in the consumer market)? The other poster remarked that while nearly all PCs run Windows, Windows itself is only responsible for ten percent of Microsoft's profit. It could be starting to look like a huge drain on development resources to develop a product for a market they're no longer interested in servicing, using a business model they no longer wish to pursue (that is, the classical "software in a box" vendor). It's clear the direction they're going... they've even told us: "Cloud first, mobile first."

        Microsoft is moving toward being exclusively a cloud services company, and the more that happens, the less traditional operating systems matter. We've seen MS embracing platforms they've previously shunned; while non-Windows devices used to be a sign that they had more work to do in crushing the competition, now they're potential customers for their cloud services. That's why we've been hearing about the "kinder, gentler" Microsoft; now they embrace their former enemies and try to sell them stuff rather than destroy them.

        Of course, "kindler, gentler" is a matter of perspective. MS has never been more rough or unkind with its non-enterprise Windows-using customers. It's treating us the way it used to treat its competition. What could be a clearer signal as to where we stand with Microsoft than that? When they start treating us like they treated all of their former "enemies," at what point do we stop and realize that we ARE the new enemy?

        As such, this thing they call "Windows 10," aka "the last Windows ever," could be a combination of an exit strategy from Windows (at least in consumer space) and an effort to milk it for all it's worth until then.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Windows 10

      "If I were in charge I would certainly hold off on rolling out any more OS "features" for a while."

      That's because you don't understand frog-boiling. There's a strategy at work here.

  9. ma1010
    FAIL

    Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

    Does anyone really *like* what MS is doing these days? We have beta-like functionality, the frequently ugly, clunky interface, the data slurping, the ad slinging, the "you have no choices about updating" and the "we'll make whatever changes to your OS and options whenever *WE* feel like it" "features" that have been baked into Win X.

    I'm not an old-time MS hater. I was an MS evangelist for many years. I just can't fathom MS's current strategy, unless they secretly WANT everyone to abandon their operating system. They turned me from a Windows booster (for Win 7, at least - I figured 8 was just another "Vista" and hopefully would be fixed with Win 9) a bit over a year ago into someone who can't stand MS at all. I stand in amazement at their strategy - it strikes me as insane. They seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate their users short of having the start-up screen for Windows say "Fuck YOU, Windows Luser! Switch to Mac or Linux, you Moron!" I'm just wondering what new anti-customer strategy they will adopt next.

    I think the only hope for MS to survive for very long is if the board fires Satya and gets a CEO with a different approach. I think many people would be willing to pay an annual fee (which seems to be a lot of what is behind what MS is doing) if it was reasonable AND they gave people back control of updates and no data slurping or ads. Take us back to the strategy of Windows 7 and add an annual fee if you must, but for God's sake, give us back control of our PCs. Or watch more and more of your customer base go to Linux or Mac.

    1. fung0

      Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

      I agree with your diagnosis, but I'm not sure firing Satya is a cure. Most of what he's doing was started by Ballmer.

      The real problem is that without a strong Gates in charge, whoever runs Microsoft is at the mercy of the quarterly stock report. Everything MS does these days is meant to look brilliant in the short term, because the long term simply doesn't matter to a CEO who'll be gone and spending his bonuses before it starts to matter.

      A secondary problem is that Microsoft has fired (or otherwise lost) a lot of its best, long-time people over the past decade or so. (I used to visit the Redmond 'campus' regularly. Up till the early 2000s, even their marketing dweebs spoke fluent C code. The current crop can't speak coherently about product features, let alone the underlying technologies.) The corporate culture has become fragmented, and there's longer any ability to execute the increasingly complex strategies that managers like Satya dream up.

      In short, Microsoft has become just another soul-less, amoral corporation - but, luckily, also an incompetent one.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

        Aye, too many MBAs and Lawyers, not enough grunts, a common fate of both public and private institutions these days.

    2. Asok Asus

      Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

      "I just can't fathom MS's current strategy, unless they secretly WANT everyone to abandon their operating system. I stand in amazement at their strategy - it strikes me as insane. They seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate their users short of having the start-up screen for Windows say "Fuck YOU, Windows Luser! Switch to Mac or Linux, you Moron!" I'm just wondering what new anti-customer strategy they will adopt next."

      That's exactly how I've thought about it. It really does make no sense to me what they are doing, unless they are deliberately trying to drive away their customers.

      Windows 10 is such a not mess, with so many ridiculous and new problems that keep accumulating version after major version, it's not worth my effort to keep up on how to fix all of them. I just tell people to either buy a W7 x64 Pro PC or go elsewhere to fix their problems.

      At least W8.x hasn't made the full transition to a cell phone operating system under the hood, and with Classic Shell and a few other tweaks, can mostly be made to behave like W7. I'm old enough and financially secure enough, that by the time the last W8.x systems have been retired, I'll be pretty much retired from the PC support biz myself.

    3. Zakhar

      Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

      "I think many people would be willing to pay an annual fee if it was reasonable"

      You did fathom: subscription.

      But saying "many people would be willing to pay" is a personal opinion. On the contrary, I think it will make a lot of people go elsewhere (Linux/Mac).

      I think their method of transitioning to the new business model is broken:

      - they continue with the old business model: extortion, aka forcing you to PAY for an O.S. you don't necessary intend to use with each new PC. So it is "double penatly": initial payment plus monthly fee. That works for enterprises (they can afford it) not for home users.

      - their mode of transition seems to be: let's make it unacceptable (ads everywhere, remove control from the user) so that the home user would prefer to pay a monthly fee to revert to an acceptable system.

      I have seen some compare the spying-and-lack-of-control to what exists on ChromeOS or the likes, but it is miles away. Did you ever pay a cent to use a Google product? (apart from I.T. professionals renting servers or developers selling APIs, but that is another matter)

      So yes:

      -1) free with the counterpart: spying-and-lack-of-control can make sense

      -2) paid with control and privacy can make sense

      ... but at the moment M$ wants 1) + 2)

      ... that is why I prefer Linux requires none, offering both free and privacy + control

      And I do selfishly hope M$ will succeed in its transition to 1), that will mean they finally got rid of their extortion business model, and that I can be able to buy my next laptop without having to pay for an O.S. I have not used for years! Should that happen, I'll stop calling them M$

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

      MS's strategy is working. They have enough of a monopoly, not just OS but functional software, that they have been able to make Windows OS terrible and still retain their huge base of users. At some point, they will start to make a more functional OS again and dribble back some control to the user. There will, of course, be a subscription fee whether monthly or annually and MS will have stabilized and increased their income and done a huge favour to the end user because they listen. I'd guess they'll make the slurp less obvious and retain the ability to change document formats at their whim and without notice to keep OSS from being easily compatible.

      1. psychonaut

        Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

        if they charge an annual fee, imagine the debacle at pc world or whatever other bucket shop most people buy their crap from

        £300 purchase. oh, and you'll have to pay MS £50 a year too.

        its just not going to fly.

        although, it seems to work with office for a lot of people, so maybe im wrong. im still on 2010.

    5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Just can't fathom what Microsoft is trying to do

      "Does anyone really *like* what MS is doing these days?"

      MS love it. They're giving themselves as much access as they want to your PC.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Ample is as good as a feast

    The manifest bounty of Anniversary Edition will be fine for 2016, plus the app updates of course.

    I'm enjoying a seamless experience across Xbox One with Windows 10 Summer Upgrade, Lumia 950 with Windows 10 Mobile and laptop/nettop/2-in-1/tower PC all running Windows 10 Anniversary Edition.

    It just works.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ample is as good as a feast

      Which part of Microsoft do you work for?

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Ample is as good as a feast

        "Which part of Microsoft do you work for?"

        He doesn't. He's from another planet - possibly another Universe.

    2. fung0

      Re: Ample is as good as a feast

      So you're the person who desperately wants to run the same UWP apps (all 12 of them) on their PC, (Windows) phone and game (XB1) console?

      Wow. You should be under glass at the Smithsonian, or the British Museum.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: Ample is as good as a feast

        I was thinking more of taking them to Badwater, Death Valley and leaving them alone in the middle of the salt pan with no water and no hat or shoes.

    3. Preston Munchensonton
      Mushroom

      Re: Ample is as good as a feast

      Hardly can call something a feast or ample when it effectively shrinks user choice down to: 1) Stay on Windows 7; 2) Convert to Linux or Mac; 3) Live with the clusterfuck that is Windows 10

      Alienation of most users is not a way to stay in business.

    4. hplasm
      Trollface

      Re: Ample is as good as a feast

      "It just works."

      Only just - until the next 'update'.

    5. MJI Silver badge

      Re: Ample is as good as a feast

      Well I would not want a desktop GUI on my Console, nor my phone, my console can also keep away from being a phone as well.

      Anyway

      PC is XP Pro dual boot with Mint

      Consoles are CellOS and OrbisOS both with XMB GUI

      Phones are Android or Symbian

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'two additional feature updates'

    please, please, please Microsoft, can the 'first update' be a fully patched windows7 and the 'second update' be a fully patched Windows7...tank q

    1. J. Cook Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: 'two additional feature updates'

      ... I'll be happy if M$ created Service Pack 2 for Windows 7 and realeased it, TBH. I should not have to kill half a day and 4-5 reboot cycles installing updates after a fresh install of W7 SP1.

      (You remember those, right? MS rolled up all the various patches, bugfixes, and updates into a single cohesive package that you downloaded, installed, and rebooted once to update a fresh from install media to a reasonably recent point in time to keep from going through the update process 4-8 times? Or even better, could merge with the installation media to make life easier? I miss those, too.)

      Beer, because it's friday.

      1. cd / && rm -rf *

        Re: 'two additional feature updates'

        I'll be happy if M$ created Service Pack 2 for Windows 7 and realeased it, TBH

        Er, they have. They just haven't called it SP2.

        https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3172605

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 'two additional feature updates'

          Thats not a service pack update, its a security patch rollup. A service pack when applied means you dont then need any other updates that came before it.

          If you apply that update (the security update rollup) you still need to apply other additional updates (150+) that came before it that apply to other things. Its not a service pack, hence why its not named SP2.

          1. psychonaut

            Re: 'two additional feature updates'

            wsusoffline

            ive recently started using this, it is miles quicker than win update on win 7.

            win 7 updates have been taking ages recently....(days) ....the cynic in me reckons its deliberate

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 'two additional feature updates'

        Take a look at wsusoffline ;) i believe it has an auto reboot to rinse and repeat next round feature.

        And it will manage to apply updates to a fresh install of sp1, where as 99% of the time windows update wont... its almost as if microshaft intentionally changed something to ensure people who did a fresh install of 7 didnt get updates (left unpatched) and lost 50% of their run time to the never ending tail spin windows update appears to go into after asking a fresh install to check microshaft update.

      3. Biggered

        Re: 'two additional feature updates'

        .......I'll be happy if M$ created Service Pack 2 for Windows 7 and realeased it, TBH

        Bit late to the party on this...

        MS have released what they call a convenience update KB3125574 which is almost SP2.

        https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3125574

        Not available for WU, you have to get it from the update catalogue.

  12. frank ly

    "...as home users begin to potentially digest Anniversary Update."

    Any more digestive system analogies?

    1. davidp231

      There's always the laxative related ones.

    2. David 132 Silver badge

      Any more digestive system analogies?

      Given that users will get the AU whether they want it or not, I think the digestive-related term that comes to mind is "gavage".

      Look it up if unfamiliar.

  13. Anonymous Custard
    Trollface

    Add and subtract

    So no new features, but how many more of the existing ones are they going to remove?

  14. nautica Silver badge
    Happy

    What should have been said...

    "...The delay would almost certainly help on the consumer front, as home users begin to potentially digest--and get over the dry heaves-- Anniversary Update."

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: What should have been said...

      "It puts the Anniversary Update on its PC or it gets the hose again"

  15. YARR

    Out of interest....

    does anyone know if the Windows development team is still based in Redmond?

    1. Captain Badmouth
      WTF?

      Re: Out of interest....

      Windows development team..?

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: Out of interest....

        "Windows development team..?"

        Yeah, these guys, shown here working on the next version of Skype.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Out of interest....

      Today's target: 47.639963 N; 122.130295 W. Fire at Will

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Angel

        Re: Out of interest....

        Why? What have I done to annoy you?

      2. davidp231

        Re: Out of interest....

        Which one's Will, do you know these people?

  16. DonL

    Happy with anniversary update

    It was actually the first time I was enthusiastic about a Microsoft update, but the anniversary update with the Windows Subsystem for Linux is great as it creates a lot of new possibilities. Now you can really use the power of the Linux commandline and scripting under Windows, which will really boost productivity on the Windows desktop. For me it puts upgrading to Windows 10 higher on the agenda.

    Hopefully they'll add built-in X11 support next year!

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Happy with anniversary update

      "Now you can really use the power of the Linux command line and scripting under Windows, which will really boost productivity on the Windows desktop."

      Can you give us a concrete example of how having a bash session running in an Ubuntu userland can 'boost productivity' given the kind of tasks people use Windows PCs for?

      1. DonL

        Re: Happy with anniversary update

        "Can you give us a concrete example of how having a bash session running in an Ubuntu userland can 'boost productivity' given the kind of tasks people use Windows PCs for?"

        Certainly, people regularly have for example a CSV file that needs to be reformatted for input in another application. With WSL it is no longer required to find/install windows equivalent/ported tools (sed/bash/perl/etc) in order to complete the task.

        Another example is when software works on one PC and not on another, you can now just run find/md5sum/diff to find the differences between those PC's which greatly speeds up troubleshooting.

        And also grep is very usefull for a large variety of tasks. And of course vim (with all it's features and syntax highlighting) is a very powerfull tool.

        And there are many more. In short, WSL enables users to run a whole new ecosystem of tools on Windows.

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: Happy with anniversary update

          > a CSV file that needs to be reformatted

          I am sure that many Windows users would load it into Excel or LibreOffice and point-and-click their way to a different format.

          > grep is very usefull for a large variety of tasks. And of course vim

          Both of which have native Windows versions.

          > WSL enables users to run a whole new ecosystem of tools on Windows.

          It may be a different ecosystem, but most tools already exist for Windows. Not that I care either way.

          1. DonL

            Re: Happy with anniversary update

            "I am sure that many Windows users would load it into Excel or LibreOffice and point-and-click their way to a different format."

            You are right, but at some point they will get stuck (too complex, too many rows) and obviously it is saves a lot of time to script it once and then just run it for years instead of doing it manually everytime.

            grep and vim (I use gvim a lot) do indeed have alternatives, but the power of grep lies often in being able to use pipes.

            And while there may be alternatives for windows it's very cumbersome to find/download/install them instead of just running "apt-get install" (which works great in WSL). Also windows alternatives can't use pipes. And with X11 support (which is not yet available) you can also extremely easily script graphical prompts in your scripts using xdialog.

            The reason people don't see the potential yet is because it has only just become available. Once it's widely installed people will start to realise (through google) that they can also use any previously Linux-only solution to complete their task IN ADDITION to the tools they are already used to.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Happy with anniversary update

              Your deluded if you think any users going to magically see benifit of doing what they already could do a better way as for bash vs cmd is limited, cygwin has a native bash / shell interface, issues with rsync, opened cmd to make calls instead of using bash, i think you might have been using it wrong...

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

              2. DonL

                Re: Happy with anniversary update

                "cygwin has a native bash / shell interface, issues with rsync, opened cmd to make calls instead of using bash, i think you might have been using it wrong..."

                Thanks for pointing this out. Apparently Babun (based om cygwin) comes with an extensive package repository and solves a lot of cygwin drawbacks.

                I've first used Cygwin on Windows 98 (and Linux since people were still on Win95). Apparently my knowlegde in this area got out-of-date (and the Babun project is only 3 years old).

        2. cd / && rm -rf *

          Re: Happy with anniversary update

          WSL enables users to run a whole new ecosystem of tools on Windows

          So does Cygwin, and it doesn't come with spyware, telemetry, ads or enforced updates.

          1. DonL

            Re: Happy with anniversary update

            "So does Cygwin"

            I have seen people bringing that up more often, but cywin doesn't provide real Linux compatibility so the performance isn't very good and you can't run the actual Linux binaries so it provides only a subset of the tools. Try for example to rsync some files over ssh and you will see that you will run into limitations.

            Also the cmd.exe terminal in Win7 is very poor compared to the bash terminal in Windows 10, making cygwin unpleasant to work with unfortunately.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Happy with anniversary update

              Im sorry, ive been using rsync over ssh on cygwin for years it works perfectly well, ive even extended its ability though a few batch scripts and windows developer tools to extended into being able to run against shadow copies... pull the other one it works just fine. As for running linux binaries, why would you want to do this... anyone normal person who would want to do this would use a bear metal or linux vm that actually had a proper package manager and updates and ssh in... its a completely pointless and fixes a problem that didnt exist.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Happy with anniversary update

          Wow a whole new users land of features they could already run and have been since windows xp (telemetry free, cough cough cough), seriously if you need those features so much maybe you should just run linux instead, or would that make the boss unhappy.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Happy with anniversary update

      "Now you can really use the power of the Linux commandline and scripting under Windows"

      But wouldn't you be better off running it under Debian or Suse or Slackware or...?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Happy with anniversary update

      Really, maybe you should be legally obliged to point out your on Microshafts payroll. Ever heard of cygwin, no well your not a very productive person are you... good luck with that.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Insert free advert for MICROS~1

    The Borg Meet Bill Gates

  18. jockmcthingiemibobb

    Steaming pile of

    Most of the whole day setting up new Windows 10 PC. Next morning won't boot. Recovery options all fail. Spend another half day setting it up. Same again. Another half day, this time ensuring I create restore points every half hour. Craps out again. Oh...and no restore points available. WTF?

    Give up, bung in Windows 7 SSD from my old dead PC. Boots up, picks up drivers from DVD and even activates.

    1. Baldy50

      Re: Steaming pile of

      Would this word do?

      Floccinaucinihilipilification.

    2. Mystic Megabyte
      FAIL

      Re: Steaming pile of

      Known here as a crock o'shite

  19. boidsonly

    The Anniversary Update ripped out my Ethernet and WiFi (again). Nothing I did would enable them-I had to revert back to the prior Win 10 build. Now they work again. Go figure, M$. You idiots.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Router issue?

      Did you reset your Router? Losing both Ethernet and Wifi sounds more like a Router conflict issue. Have the same name but a different install of Windows 10 confuses the hell out of my Netgear Router, causing a name conflict.

  20. Magani
    Flame

    So Redstone 2 is coming.

    I hope it has more luck than the original...

    https://youtu.be/7O4V7JfeTSU

  21. Carl D

    I actually downloaded the Windows 10 Anniversary Update ISO yesterday, put it on a USB stick (with Rufus) and installed it on a spare solid state drive.

    It lasted about half an hour before I wiped it and reconnected my Windows 7/Linux Mint dual boot SSD.

    W10 has become even more of a mess than it was before... take a bow, MS. I didn't think it was possible (I'm fibbing... I really knew you could do it going on your 'performance' lately).

    As soon as it started updating Candy Crush and several other 'apps' without my intervention, that was the end of it for me. Oh, and by the way MS - my computer runs PROGRAMS, not APPS.

    Apps are the silly little amateurish things (which usually try to extort money from you with 'in app purchases') that run on smartphones and tablets... oh, wait... I think I've just described most of the unwanted bloatware that comes with W10.

    And, I don't want to spend time reinstalling programs that W10 deems 'unworthy' and removes every time W10 has a major update. I also don't want to keep changing my settings back to what I want after they're continually changed to MS's defaults which also seems to happen every time there's a W10 update.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Finally the Mojang take over pays off!

    "It’s reported here, however, that an update for Windows 10 called Redstone 2 that had been due for this year had been pushed into spring 2017."

    Because without owning Mojang (company behind Minecraft) they might have gotten into trouble naming this monstrosity 'Redstone' but now they can without problems.

    Just too bad but I'm still more interested in the actual redstone (Minecraft component) than this :P

  23. Mark Simon
    Joke

    What’s with the photo?

    The fingers are the wrong way round …

    1. Captain Badmouth

      Re: What’s with the photo?

      "The fingers are the wrong way round …"

      Local mirror.

  24. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Even my 11-year-old granddaughter expresses a wise preference. It turns out that she's used both at primary school and prefers 7.

    Her mother let her own laptop upgrade to 10. I wonder what she's going to way when Little Orphan Annie arrives on it, adverts & all.

  25. Skymonrie
    Coat

    Windows 11 pictures leaked!

    Now the people who were ever going to upgrade have the latest shiny, time to do the normal ms thing and stagnate development.

    SaaS - like that nasty virus that had the world in panic not too long ago

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I feel like (being a long standing windows user) that i enjoyed a very happy marriage for the most part, then some time around windows 10 getting announced things started to go wrong and its gone wrong pretty quickly since then. I feel so betrayed, ignored and largely like you stopped caring and listening to what was being said.

    Im happy to announce though the divorce just went through and my partner, miss tux is twice the operating system you ever were. My only regret is i didn't leave you earlier....

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Feature updates?

    Uh, 'scuse me if I'm being iggerant here, but I thought the job of an OS was to allow software to run on the underlying hardware. If it does that, then it surely doesn't need any 'feature updates', all it needs is bugfixes.

    Additional features should mean it's userland stuff being added to, and IMO most userland stuff on most OS's already have too damned many 'features', like umpty ways to invoke programs or features accidentally, and no sane way to turn off the ones you don't want.

    Yeah, yeah, I'm a bitter old biddy, I'll get me coat - mines the Hessian one..

  28. PapaD

    Linux

    I'm using Windows 10 atm on my desktop, though I've installed a number of pieces of software to try and prevent it from slurping my data, or making me have to see the silly icons.

    I would very much like to switch to Linux, and have made several attempts to do so, however every attempt has been a failure due to one thing.

    The sheer amount of effort needed to get the games I play to actually work properly - on the last attempt I gave it an entire weekend of trying, and then reverted.

    I'm at the stage where I think the only way to get my games to work on Linux (assuming they even can) is to have a Linux professional on hand to sort it all out for me. I'm far from a professional (though I did have someone very familiar with Linux trying to help, to no avail)

    So, I'm stuck with Windows 10 atm, and using a bunch of 3rd party software to stop it doing the stupid things it tries to do.

    I am very tempted to try and get an enterprise key just so I can take more control back.

  29. lago

    absolute fuk up

    So I've 3 pc's, all i7 based, 2 with W10 1 with W7.

    The W10.............. both had unaccountable problems so I upgraded 1 of them to W8!!!

    At present W7 & W8 function as they should, the remaining W10 not at all so.

    I suspect all due to updates, sometimes I lose a video program, sometimes a web site maker, sometimes a music program, always my restore points, etc etc , & what's more the features/design of W10 change willy nilly?

    My son has gone to Mac saying it's worth the cost, I'm trialling Linux.

    Microsoft go to hell. FAST

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