microsoft

A majority of IT administrators polled this summer said that the twice-a-year Windows 10 feature upgrades are not useful – or rarely so – a stunning stance considering how much effort Microsoft puts into building the updates.

About 58% of nearly 500 business professionals who are responsible for servicing Windows at their workplaces said that Windows 10 feature upgrades – two annually, one each in the spring and fall – were either not useful (24%) or rarely useful (34%).

Only 20% contended that the upgrades were useful in some fashion, while a slightly larger chunk – 22% – choose a noncommittal neutral as a response, claiming that the operating system’s updates were neither useful nor not useful. (It might be best to consider this answer as undecided since in this binary world if something is not not useful, that must mean it is useful.)

To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft has released 129 updates to its Windows ecosystem, but the good news  this month is that we are not responding to any zero-days or publicly reported vulnerabilities. Microsoft appears to be getting serious about removing Adobe Flash Player (a good thing) and we see a very broad update to Windows desktops and servers. Unusually, Microsoft’s browsers are not a huge focus this month, and both the Microsoft Office (excluding SharePoint) and development platform have received only a few, lower profile patches.

We have included a helpful infographic, which this month looks a little lopsided as all of the attention should be on Windows components.

To read this article in full, please click here

Someday, you’ll tell your grandkids about the halcyon days of July and August 2020, when Microsoft took pity on us poor patching souls and introduced few bugs in its stew of Patch Tuesday patches.

Now, it looks like we’re well on our way to another mess.

Although it’s still too early to throw up your hands and peremptorily pass on the September crop, I assure you that there is no joy in Patchville.

To read this article in full, please click here

It looks like we’re good to go with Microsoft’s August Windows and Office patches. The second cumulative update for Windows 8.1, KB 4578013, throws some Virtual Private Networks out of kilter, and the Win7 patches may knock out your printers (for those of you paying for Win7 Extended Security Updates). But most of the other bugs appear to be squashed.

To read this article in full, please click here