The early adopters of Windows 10 were quick to receive a behemoth patch a day after the new OS had gone live. Here, we\u2019ll try to weigh the pros and cons of this.<\/p>\n
Previously published:<\/em><\/p>\n Cons \u2013 a monster of a patch<\/strong><\/p>\n Criticizing Microsoft\u2019s products is a decades-long staple; currently there are less reasons for it (probably) than 15 or so years ago, but the past reputation lives on. On the surface, Microsoft has just given its seasoned critics a reason to say that the Redmond-based software giant has again released a half-baked product.<\/p>\n Indeed, the patch is rather large: roughly 500 Mb to download, it expands to over one gigabyte of data once its installation begins.<\/p>\n Welcoming #Windows10: A monster #patch<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n What is being patched? Early last minutes bugs, some of them, according to Microsoft, \u201carrived\u201d a bit too late to prevent them from making it into the final release, hence the traffic and disk devouring update.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t going to make businesses too happy. Downloading an extra 500 Mb may mean little, but distribution of the update over any reasonably large set\u00a0of machines and devices and installing it is going to put a strain on infrastructure. Add possible sticks, delays, failures, and sudden incompatibilities, and there is definitely grounds for irritation.<\/p>\n On the brighter side, if Windows 10 is installed as an upgrade, any manual downloading won\u2019t be necessary: The installation is automatically upgraded to the proper version.<\/p>\n Besides, it\u2019s been five days\u00a0and Microsoft must have already updated all the packages by now.<\/p>\n A reality check<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, a couple of words about being half-baked. Microsoft released not just on a PC operating system, but a large cross-platform, \u201call-in-one\u201d megalith, which was supposed to be equally good for both PCs and laptops, smartphones, tablets, and all the in betweens\u00a0as well.<\/p>\n Microsoft hasn\u2019t yet announced how many lines of code there are in Windows 10, but in Windows 8 there are roughly 40+ million lines. Imagine the scale. And the possibility for errors and bugs.<\/p>\n Beta testing and early adoption programs are created exactly for the sake of taking out all possible bugs \u2013 the collective mind of a multitude of users would definitely work way better than an in-house bug hunting department of any single corporation, even as large as Microsoft. Still, we see even that approach may lag behind.<\/p>\n\n