On Wed, 6 May 2015 09:22:48 +0100, Bill wrote:

And what do I do when W10 is 2 years old and I have the original
recovery disk or partition and my ssd wears out and needs a new one. I
recover from the media I have and then need 2 years of updates.

Within about 6 months (give or take) of installing the public release
version of W10, you put your original recovery disk away for safekeeping and
never use it again, unless you're restoring the system for disposal. Instead
of using that disc, you start thinking about using your own restore disk.
You know, the one(s) that you periodically make every 6 months or so.

My
experience is that these updates need to be done in the correct order or
in small batches to avoid recurrent update failures. An automatic system
will make this impossible.

I personally haven't ever seen any issues with letting the update process
take care of itself, so I never bother doing anything special like breaking
a larger number of updates into several smaller chunks. I'm aware that a few
others have had issues, though. As for an automatic update system making
that impossible, I think it might be the opposite. It might make updating
seamless and transparent.

There isn't a day that goes by without my Android phone telling me that such
and such apps were updated. It all happens seamlessly, in the background,
and so far there's never been an issue. So the model is there and it's now
down to whether MS can successfully do what Android does, although I'm
clearly mixing apps and OS here. Two different kettle of fish, but there are
still similarities.

Also, what happens when the Windows Insiders get bored and gradually
drop out. Who will be testing for the great corporations then?

The entire user base?

Still, to make this work, they will have to provide Insiders with a
current free OS on a permanent basis. I might sign up to that.

Why couldn't they do it with telemetry?