While it has been quite some time since I wrote a fresh article on here, I figured it was a great moment to dust out the old writing skills. As a person who has reviewed this technology for almost 15 years now, I know that they will never quite go away, even if I may take a break from creating articles.
Background
The last two Windows updates have been quite the ride, to say the least. I cannot scamper around this issue easily; Many have reached out to me personally asking about various issues and which bugs affected the 1809 update. This later turned into a similar round with 1903, when SD card readers would prevent a majority of systems from updating. Thankfully this issue has been addressed, so I know my personal 1903 review will drop on this site in the coming weeks. I wanted to update multiple devices to 1903 from 1809 and earlier versions to provide you, dear readers, the most accurate information I could.
So what’s changing?
As reported by Engadget and other sites on the state of the next update, Microsoft is learning and will change the fundamental way updates get delivered from now on. I saw this change partially happen when the lead of the Insider blog posts, Dona Sarkar, mentioned upcoming builds as falling under the 20H1 umbrella. These came in forms of quotes such as “we are releasing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18922 (20H1) to Windows Insiders in the Fast ring.” I knew something was definitely up.
The new update to Windows will be more of a service pack, although it will probably be just called a “cumulative update” to you in Windows update. It will save your time a lot further than prior, as you will be able to delay the update as a pro user for a bit longer, but also installing it will only take a few minutes. Unlike the full OS update, this only introduces performance fixes and new enterprise features for now.
For now?
Yes, that’s right. I see a lot of news stories reporting that build 10000 will be the final update with only these initial first-round changes, and is going through testing. The latter part of this is correct, but the features released today are not the final set of them which you will get by September. As written in a Windows Blog posting from this week, “We’re using this update to test our process and servicing pipeline for delivering these updates to customers. 19H2 updates to Insiders will also be cumulative with the latest May 2019 Updates.” To translate this into better language, your update in September will include fixes from other months; Therefore, you can presume that when installing a copy of Windows which has 19H1, the number of updates will look much cleaner as this servicing release will “tighty up” all of them in one go.
How will I know that I have 19H2?
Simple! Pressing Windows key +R and typing in the word WinVer (shortened form of windows version,) and pressing OK, will read you the build number. If this is 18362, followed by 5 digits or more, you know that this machine is running the update from the second half of 2019.
This is the right move, Microsoft!
I do applaud the decision made around how Windows updates will be delivered moving forward. Clearly, issues around the process and delivery caused some snags, and customers were unhappy with the “forcefulness” of updating. This will be no more moving forward. You will see less painful changes and will always have a choice to delay yearly updates for a few months, with each Windows feature update getting 18 months of support. This means that pro users technically could remain on the 2019 update well into 2020 and 19h2 possibly into early 2021. I look forward to writing you quality reviews of what these changes will include.
I still encourage you to check out Cool Blind Tech’s page as they write good content on what is being researched and mainstream blindness related technology. My offer page on there has my prior writings, and I respect Nelson Rego for keeping these up there for the general readership to use. This blog will contain more of my personal musings but also professional reviews, and I hope to engage more with my readers personally on an individual level by returning to independent blogging. I do hope that you will continue this journey forward as I write my way through life in the oodles of operating system releases to come.