Technology

I hate Windows for all the monetisation and privacy issues but I never really had problems with it killing my computer.

It's kind of disingenuous of you to proudly say, "I don't use the same version of Windows that this person likely does and I don't have the same issues that this person does so they must be full of shit".

That's the difference between the Home and Pro versions though. The things that generally break on the Home versions are all the things not generally enabled on a domain controlled Pro version. Thisbis more about Microsoft just being bad at small updates versus these giant roundup packages they like to ship.

The interesting thing for me is that I own two different surface pro 7 tablets. I have one for work and one for home (now that work doesn't require me to bring my own device anymore). The work surface has windows 10 pro on it. My home one doesn't, The difference is very interesting. The IT team have disabled a lot of stuff on my work surface that I don't even have access to on my home unit. I don't often have bugs from updates breaking things at work. I do at home though which is enough for me to perhaps upgrade the windows key on my home unit someday. If I don't install linux first which is a possibility.

I find this to either be a lie or self inflicted.

"I've never experienced what you describe, so it must be either imagined or your own fault."

I've seen this nonsense over and over again in communities of all kinds, most often in tech forums (where there are always a few participants suffering from a big-fish-little-pond effect). It's a very rude and foolish bit of human behavior.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

It’s disingenuous and probably harmful to be telling people to disable updates that lead them to be exposed to vulnerabilities.

That is probably why Microsoft forced updates on people in W10.

My two cents, I could say the same as the author. My Windows work laptop most of the times cannot wake up from sleep (you know, opening the lid after it's closed) so I have to force a restart. There's a 50% or less chance that Bluetooth and WiFi won't work at all (they won't be displayed on Windows, like it's not even a feature) after I turn the laptop on, so most of my pre-work morning is restarting the laptop until it's working as intended. It's the third laptop I got from them, they're different models but they're all HP, and they all had problems. The Macs and the same HP laptops running Linux have none of these issues.

It's not harmful to tell average people who run windows to disable updates, because you can't disable the updates as a single-license scrub.

(Theres usually some hacky bullshit to delay or block updates, but they break constantly and you have to keep finding new ones, because Microsoft thinks of their userbase as stupid babies who can't be trusted with their own hardware).

Also, you live in your own personal slice of Windows control with your hundreds/thousands of systems being managed with group policies. I have no doubt that you don't see issues, because your company chose a few models of laptop or desktop and know how they'll react to the updates. You can turn off the annoying shit, and choose specific updates at specific times. Microsoft doesn't want to piss off their corporate customers, especially the ones with massive spending contracts with Dell/HP/Lenovo.

Thing is, outside of you - and your groups of other corporate windows admins - the general user (with varied hardware/software configurations) don't have the safety of catching issues on a few test machines and delaying a deploy to the fleet, or even the option to delay updates at all, and they're screwed over constantly by random broken drivers, system setting that aren't respected between updates, and bloat/backdoors that you can't opt out of.

It is you who is being disingenuous, by suggesting that the windows update system has no flaws, because you operate in an extremely controlled environment with tons of safeguards and - ironically - way more autonomy.

I can kind of feel the author on this. I'm in charge of a lot of "special projects" at work that basically come down to, "figure out a way to replicate this extremely expensive technology or software using low cost or free alternatives". It ends up being an unholy mix of programs and hardware that is held together with duct tape and super glue and any minor perturbation means something breaks.

There have been two distinct Windows updates in recent memory that have broken things.

1. The one that stopped network printers from working, and you had to change a specific GPO setting which was not available in Intune at the time, meaning I had to do it manually on each computer.

2. The one that removed all shortcuts to Office 365 apps from the desktop and start menu, necessitating a repair... manually on each affected machine.

So it does happen on occasion. It's not as bad as in the XP days, but it still can be a little sketchy at times