Windows 10 October 2018 Update is now (finally) rolling out for real

Microsoft has finally decided that it can fully push ahead with deploying the troubled October 2018 Update, having officially labelled the upgrade as ready for broad deployment to Windows 10 users.

The company has just announced: “Based on the data and the feedback we’ve received from consumers, OEMs, ISVs, partners, and commercial customers, Windows 10, version 1809 [October 2018 Update] has transitioned to broad deployment.”

Essentially, this means that Microsoft believes the update is fully shipshape and ready to be delivered broadly to all PCs, and also to business computers (with business environments needing to be sure of the stability of an update for obvious reasons – downtime costs money here).

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Windows 10 October 2018 Update has had a dismal time of things since its release, and indeed shortly after it was launched, critical bugs (involving file deletion) caused Microsoft to halt distribution of the upgrade entirely for a month.

Even when it resumed, the update was trickled out at a snail’s pace, and while Microsoft announced that it had fully restarted its ‘phased rollout’ process in January, the deployment process has still been slow.

Seriously sluggish

As we saw yesterday, the October 2018 Update is still only on around a quarter of Windows 10 PCs out there, according to one set of statistics. Maybe now the adoption rate will finally kick into a higher gear.

There’s even talk that some computers will skip the October 2018 Update entirely, given that its successor – which will supposedly be called the April 2019 Update – is expected to start its rollout next month.

And that’s perhaps why Microsoft is now trying to forge ahead with the October 2018 Update – because there’s simply little time left. Although obviously, the fear here might be that in trying to rush things out the door a bit, there could still be gremlins in the works somewhere.

Fingers crossed that isn’t the case, but it wouldn’t be a massive stretch to believe, given the history of the October 2018 Update, which seems to have run into nothing but niggles – or indeed show-stopping bugs – since birth.

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Via ZDNet