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Win7 and 8.1 to get cumulative updates – you no longer control your Win7 or 8.1 machine
InfoWorld Woody on Windows: Microsoft ‘simplifying’ Win 7 and 8.1 updates pushes even harder toward Windows 10. End of Windows as we know it?
Hard to believe, but starting in October, we won’t have the luxury of vetting patches before they’re dumped.
Nathan Mercer on TechNet:
Based on your feedback, today we’re announcing some new changes for servicing Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1. These changes also apply to Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2…
From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update. The Monthly Rollup will be published to Windows Update (WU), WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Each month’s rollup will supersede the previous month’s rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current. i.e. a Monthly Rollup in October 2016 will include all updates for October, while November 2016 will include October and November updates, and so on. Devices that have this rollup installed from Windows Update or WSUS will utilize express packages, keeping the monthly download size small.
Over time, Windows will also proactively add patches to the Monthly Rollup that have been released in the past. Our goal is eventually to include all of the patches we have shipped in the past since the last baseline, so that the Monthly Rollup becomes fully cumulative and you need only to install the latest single rollup to be up to date. We encourage you to move to the Monthly Rollup model to improve reliability and quality of updating all versions of Windows.
We are planning to add these previously shipped patches over the next year and will document each addition so IT admins know which KBs have been included each month.
Also from October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Security-only update. This update collects all of the security patches for that month into a single update. Unlike the Monthly Rollup, the Security-only update will only include new security patches that are released for that month. Individual patches will no longer be available.
Devil’s advocate: If you can no longer control what Microsoft puts on your Win7 or 8.1 machine, is there any reason to avoid Windows 10?
Devil’s second advocate: How can companies cede this kind of control to MS?