Microsoft’s WaaS Changes Are All About Windows 7 (Premium)

Last week’s seismic changes to Windows as a Service have nothing to do with Windows 10 users and are rather all about the nearly 600 million PCs still running Windows 7. Worse, the changes simply do not go far enough.

I know. Give me an inch and I’ll ask for a mile.

But bear with me here: I was always on the right side of the argument over Windows as a Service (WaaS) and the horrible impact it would have on all of Microsoft’s customers. And since mouthing off about the obvious and overwhelming downsides to this scheme, I’ve watched helplessly as Microsoft’s reliability has nosedived, even as it quickened the pace on reboot-triggering Windows 10 updates. This isn’t about complaining for the sake of complaining. It’s about me trying to raise awareness of these issues and, in the process, inspire Microsoft’s customers to expect more and inspire Microsoft to do better.

I hope I inspired a few individuals to expect more. But I don’t believe that my incessant complaining about WaaS did a thing to inspire Microsoft in the slightest.

Instead, Microsoft is suddenly making massive changes to WaaS, for both individuals and businesses, to address the negative perceptions that this scheme has amongst a user base that is critical to its future success: Windows 7 users. That those perceptions are correct—and they are—is almost beside the point. Any mass rejection of the Windows 10 upgrade—either by remaining on an increasingly insecure Windows 7 or, worse, by the adoption of rival platforms—would drive a stake into Microsoft’s plans to modernize the platform.

With just 9 months to go until Windows 7 heads off into the sunset—well, at least for most of us; Microsoft’s largest corporate customers can pay for up to three years of additional support—Microsoft faces a familiar situation in that there is a sizable number of customers still using a Windows version that is about to expire. But this time is a little different, of course: Where Windows XP users at least had a viable option in Windows 7, today’s remaining Windows 7 users represent a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. They’re not just uninterested in Windows 10, in many cases, they are openly hostile to it.

And it’s all because of WaaS.

So, Microsoft is changing WaaS in major ways. And yes, this is a good thing: Among the changes, the software giant will finally let Windows 10 Home users delay quality and feature updates, a feature that they’ve never enjoyed to date. That is very much a victory, for sure.

But it’s not enough.

There are two remaining problems with WaaS, and both are debilitating for Microsoft’s customers. So now that Microsoft has given us that proverbial inch, I must ask—on behalf of users everywhere—for that next mile.

First, and most obviously, the current schedule, in which Windows 10 is upgraded to major new versions of the operating system twice per year via so-called Feature Updates is untenable. And not just because these upgrades are disruptive and have a history of being horribly unreliable. The twice-annual upgrades are also tied to the nebulous Windows 10 support lifecycle. And while this lifecycle various somewhat dramatically between Microsoft’s individual and businesses customers, it’s a problem for both, and for the company.

Remember that the original point of Windows 10 was to get as much of the entire user base as possible on the same Windows version so that they could be more easily kept up-to-date. That’s a nice goal, in theory. But the reality has been quite a bit different.

Under the old Windows life cycle schedule, new Windows versions shipped about once every three years and each was supported for 10 years, with five years of mainstream support during which the product could be updated functionally and five years of extended support that was all about quality and security updates. The result was a manageable system. Businesses could skip two major Windows versions each decade and always stay up-to-date. Most individuals simply kept using whatever version of Windows came on their PCs and used that for 5-10 years without worry.

Today, Microsoft upgrades Windows to a new version twice per year, a pace that is six times faster than before. So when we celebrate Windows 10’s fourth anniversary this summer, there will have been 8 new versions of Windows that shipped in that time frame. Under the previous scheme, there would have been only one.

Each of these Windows versions has to be supported with its own unique patches and fixes. So every time a bug is fixed, a different version of the fix has to ship for each version of Windows. Now, Microsoft doesn’t actually support all 8 of those Windows 10 versions. Instead, the feature updates are supported for 18 to 30 months, depending on the customer type. So there are 5 fully supported Windows 10 versions out there today, and there will be 6 in about a month when version 1903 is released. That’s 5 versions of Windows vs. one under the previous scheme.

Of course, that’s Microsoft’s problem. And what I really care about is the people who use Microsoft’s software.

Generally speaking, releasing two major Windows version upgrades each year and having to support five or six different Windows versions at a time leads to a complexity that Microsoft has shown it is incapable of handling. Last year’s two disastrous feature update releases are the perfect example. Here we are, on the cusp of the release of Windows 10 version 1903, and the previous feature update, 1809, has only just now been certified for broad distribution. That’s how unreliable that update was.

More specifically, while I do celebrate Microsoft finally allowing consumers using Windows 10 Home to defer updates, the system is too onerous for those users.

Consider how a Windows 10 Pro user can defer/delay the installation of quality updates—which arrive between once and several times per month—and feature updates, which, again, arrive twice each year.

Windows 10 Pro users can pause all updates for up to 35 days at a time. They can defer feature updates for up to 365 days, or one year, at a time. And they can defer quality updates for 30 days at a time.

That’s a great system. And I strongly recommend that anyone using Windows 10 Pro or higher consider deferring both update types immediately in order to counter the rampant reliability issues Microsoft has had with both. Given the time frames available, I would personally set feature updates on a 60-day deferral and quality updates on a 30-day deferral. (I write “would” there because I can’t actually do this thanks to my day job.)

So what can Windows 10 Home users do now? They can pause updates for up to 35 days. They can do this in 7-day chunks directly from Windows Update in Windows 10. Or they can figure out that there’s an advanced options section where they can specify up to 35 days. (I strongly recommend doing this.)

The good news is that the 35-day pausing capability is there. And as for feature updates, they will not be automatically installed anymore. You will need to trigger that install manually, which is also a hugely positive change. (Previously, just checking for updates could have triggered a feature update—nee major Windows version upgrade—which most people probably didn’t want.)

So what’s my problem here? Well, with Windows 10 Home, both quality and features updates are on that 35-day schedule. And not only is the 35-day thing hidden under advanced options, a place no normal user would look, but 35 days is not enough time, in my opinion, for Microsoft to vet the quality of a feature update. The time period thus should be longer.

I even have a specific recommendation: Simply give Windows 10 Home users the exact same update pausing and deferral capabilities as other Windows 10 users. They should be able to defer feature updates for up to 365 days. You know, like an adult.

WaaS is too unreliable to trust. And until that changes—hint: It will never change—Microsoft needs to let all of its customers have more control over how updates are applied to their PCs. That’s not only the right thing to do to appease those upgrading from Windows 7, it’s also the right thing to do for everyone.