14 DAY TRIAL // The fall is here, at least that’s what the calendar seems to indicate, and as it happened every time for the past three years, it’s the moment when Microsoft ships a new Windows 10 feature update.
This time, it’s Windows 10 Redstone 5, officially called October 2018 Update and labeled as version 1809. Microsoft has recently confirmed the name of this release, which in its turn is a direct hint at its release date.
The new OS version is projected to be finalized as soon as this month, with some sources indicating that mid-September is currently Microsoft’s target.
This allows the company to have enough time to ship the RTM build to insiders and then to deliver the last-minute fixes, only to include them in a first-day patch that would also be pushed to to early adopters.
Obviously, the release of the October 2018 Update will take place in stages, but as compared to the first Windows 10 feature updates, like the Anniversary Update, it will complete much faster thanks to substantial improvements that Microsoft has made to its rollout system.
Despite the significant number of goodies coming to systems with this new update, I noticed that many people are actually rather pessimistic towards it, with a few of them even planning to stick with an older Windows 10 version.
While we won’t go over the same things once again and highlight why it’s so important to always be running the latest OS version with the most recent updates installed, these users seem to have really low expectations from the new features and the performance boost that the October 2018 Update is supposed to bring.
Undoubtedly, an important share of the existing Windows 10 userbase is very excited with the arrival of a new major update, but on the other hand, there are these users who don’t think things are improving so substantially. At least not as compared to the April 2018 Update.
"Hopefully this won't be as bad as 1803. Or worse," reddit user ctilvolover23 says. "I wish I could stay on 1703 forever," BottasWDC adds. "Still no tabbed file explorer. Shameful," nuckle posted too. More such comments are available in this reddit discussion.
For many, the April 2018 Update itself has been a crazy roller coaster ride, especially due to a big number of issues that occurred on a wide array of configurations.
Microsoft itself halted the rollout of the April 2018 Update after it discovered issues causing unexpected behavior like black screens. Fixes landed several weeks later, eventually forcing users to perform clean-reinstalls to correct bugs that weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
All these issues were corrected eventually, though it made many wonder if the company actually tested this update thoroughly before the public release. The debut of the April 2018 Update itself was pushed back due to a last-minute bug, and despite the delay, the update experience was still buggy, to say the least.
Considering all of these, it’s not hard to understand why a number of users are concerned that things may not go really smoothly in the case of the October 2018 Update either. If there’s an advice that anyone should offer is to avoid rushing to install it once the rollout begins and wait at least a few days to see how the update experience is for other people.
What are your expectations from the October 2018 Update? Are you excited with the launch of another Windows 10 Update or do you think this fast update cadence isn’t bringing anything good? Let us know what you think in the comment box after the jump.