The IT Nerd

Microsoft yesterday officially released Windows Version 1903 to the public. It’s the latest “feature update” to Microsoft’s “operating system as a service” and they claim that it’s all good.

But if I were you, I’d wait for a bit as they said the same thing with Windows 10 version 1803, and the very late Windows 10 version 1809 update. Both of which were total disasters for Microsoft. And both of which made me very busy as I worked hard to fix issues for clients that these updates caused. But if you really want to dive into the deep end with this latest version of Windows, here’s what you will get:

• From now on the Windows installation will be put in an area of “reserved storage”. It means you now need twice as much space on your drive, but it does mean that there’s no risk of an update causing issues if you don’t have enough disk space.
• There is a unified search box which has been uncoupled from Cortana which most people never use as far as I know.
• Windows Sandbox will let you test things that could kill your machine if you get them wrong. That’s handy for people who like to tinker.
• Much more of the “additional content” that comes with Windows which I would call “bloatware” can be removed if you want to reclaim space. But if you ever want it back, you can always reinstall it from the Microsoft Store.
• There are tweaks like font management, faster startup and updated Emoji support. There’s also a dark mode because all the cool kids run their computers in dark mode.

But the most important feature that comes with this update is that Microsoft has deemed its users to be worthy enough to decide how and when updates get applied. A blog post from Microsoft has info on that front. And on top of that, Microsoft has made a Windows release health dashboard available, to provide insight into the status of the update rollout and any issues being reported. My advice is to look at that dashboard and make a decision as to when to upgrade to version 1903 based on that. Or just wait for a couple of weeks seeing as any major issues will pop up on the Interwebs very quickly based on what happened with the last two feature updates that Microsoft put out. If you do decide to take a swim in the deep end, Microsoft will try to cover your posterior with a feature that will try to roll back the install, if things don’t work out as they should.

Oh by the way, Microsoft will automatically update devices running the Home and Pro editions of Windows 10 version 1803 to ensure service continues past November 12, 2019. So you may want to factor that into your decision making.

Regardless of whether you update now or later, make a backup of your data before you upgrade. Because you can never be too careful. But if I were you, I’d wait for a bit and see how stable version 1903 of Windows 10 is first.

This entry was posted on May 22, 2019 at 9:25 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.