.

[tidy]

.

 

[Dahak]

No the manual control is still there. It has not gone away. and we can assume that the next windows is the same (threshold/9)

During Install of Windows 8/8.1, yes its on on or off, but you can change that after. Windows 7 gave you the 3 options On, On Recommended, and Off/Ask Me Later

Control Panel is not "buried" in windows 8/8.1, for both you can hit Winkey+X and its right there. Or hit search and type Control Panel.

While Yes this is 1 or 2 more steps, I would not call "buried"


Now they are starting to require certain baselines for further updates, for example for Win 8.1 you must have Update 1 installed before getting any more updates.

 

[code65536]

It's not going away. Microsoft isn't that stupid. Nor would it be enforceable (disable the WU service, block the WU servers, etc.).

Now, there is talk about the Threshold preview requiring people to "agree to" automatic updates. I'm not sure what that means, nor am I sure that's even accurate. It could be an unfounded rumor. It could be something that got mangled as it got passed from person to person in a game of telephone. Or it could be something that's exclusive to the Threshold technical preview, for preview purposes.

But there's no way that this is going to be the case in general. Seeing as how they are desperately trying to win back the favor of enterprise customers, and careful the curation of updates is a very important thing for the enterprise (and there are lots of legitimate cases for manual control elsewhere)... well, as I said, Microsoft isn't that stupid.

 

[Dahak]

Now, there is talk about the Threshold preview requiring people to "agree to" automatic updates.
*SNIP* Or it could be something that's exclusive to the Threshold technical preview, for preview purposes.

From the rumors that I read/heard it seems like it will be exclusive to the preview. Although now I cant remember where it heard it

 

[postmortemIA]

Always on won't work for enterprise... companies have their own update servers.

 

[imagoon]

Ah the Internet. Where someone can make something up and then have it Parroted by 200,000 people.

It would be pretty damaging to force updates on all desktops. MS does issue bad patches from time to time. I wouldn't want to be them if they forced those patches and took down several companies or orgs. I also wouldn't want to be MS when 1500 PC's want to download a 350MB patch at a company or org some place and they had removed the ability to say no or run WSUS, SCCM etc.

 

[blankslate]

It would be stupid for MS to treat every Windows user like a technically challenged person who needs to be spoonfed updates.

I've heard several times on a voip client like Ventrilo "damnit, my computer updated." after the person disconnected from an online game and the voip.



....

 

[xSauronx]

I wouldn't want to be them if they forced those patches and took down several companies or orgs.

i think the most recent fiasco took down many thousands of pcs. not pretty from a PR standpoint. i am fortunate that i didnt have any problems where i work. they are definitely getting flak lately for some azure services outages and windows updates problems that appear to be related to a quicker development pace that doesnt include enough time for testing prior to release.

I also wouldn't want to be MS when 1500 PC's want to download a 350MB patch at a company or org some place and they had removed the ability to say no or run WSUS, SCCM etc.

that is probably the least of their worries. 1500 pcs pulling updates is a drop in the bucket. there are probably many more times that in just WSUS servers getting updates; never mind single pcs.

there are a lot of IPs used for windows updates, as they are surely spread around on a lot of publicly available servers. see this thread:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...r-windows-server-2008?forum=winserversecurity


for some reason my boss insists on having our 200 work pcs run windows updates over the internet instead of from a WSUS server. despite my having set up a WSUS server for new pc deployments anyway. /facepalm

 

[imagoon]

i think the most recent fiasco took down many thousands of pcs. not pretty from a PR standpoint. i am fortunate that i didnt have any problems where i work. they are definitely getting flak lately for some azure services outages and windows updates problems that appear to be related to a quicker development pace that doesnt include enough time for testing prior to release.



that is probably the least of their worries. 1500 pcs pulling updates is a drop in the bucket. there are probably many more times that in just WSUS servers getting updates; never mind single pcs.

there are a lot of IPs used for windows updates, as they are surely spread around on a lot of publicly available servers. see this thread:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com...r-windows-server-2008?forum=winserversecurity


for some reason my boss insists on having our 200 work pcs run windows updates over the internet instead of from a WSUS server. despite my having set up a WSUS server for new pc deployments anyway. /facepalm

You slightly missed my point:

If they forced patching, "The world" would go down. Here we hold back unless there is something crazy going on / zero day / out of band / etc. "Forced" could mean on Wednesday every Windows machine on the net goes dark....

The 350mb update part: I wasn't talking from the MS side. They use Akamai so they wouldn't have an issue. I am more thinking about the "525GB" download that just attempted to come though the office internet connection. Not everyone is equipped to handle a download like that...