The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM EST
Windows 10 has finally settled into a groove. We are just over two years from the initial release of Windows 10. Part of the promise of Windows 10 was Windows as a service, or in other words, continual updates to Windows rather than monolithic version releases every couple of years. However, the haphazard schedule of feature updates was not pleasing to one stable customer of Microsoft’s. Businesses don’t love surprises, and they need time to plan ahead, and test, in order to deliver the vision that Microsoft has envisioned for Windows 10 going forward, so 2017 is the first year we get to see the new spring and fall updates, first with the Creators Update on April 11, 2017, and now the Fall Creators Update which became widely available on October 17, 2017.
The biannual release schedule still might be too aggressive for a lot of enterprises, but it’s a balancing act for Microsoft to keep the features coming for consumers, security updates coming for enterprise, and of course, keeping Windows 10 fresh in the eyes of everyone. Hopefully this new schedule works out though, since it’s nice to see fewer, smaller updates, rather than annual massive updates which may cause even more challenges.
| Windows 10 Version History | |||||
| Version | Version Number | Release Date | |||
| Windows 10 Original Release | 1507 | July 29, 2015 | |||
| November Update | 1511 | November 10, 2015 | |||
| Anniversary Update | 1607 | August 2, 2016 | |||
| Creators Update | 1703 | April 5, 2017 | |||
| Fall Creators Update | 1709 | October 17, 2017 | |||
And a smaller update is arguably what we’ve had for both of the 2017 releases for Windows, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. That’s not to take away from the many small changes and fixes under the hood, but more a fact that Windows 10 is solid, and stable, and updates only need to further smooth out some of the rough spots, and add a few new ideas for people to utilize. Windows 10 is now well known, with an official monthly active user base of over 500 million devices. It’s a solid number, despite being well under initial targets at launch.
With the Fall Creators Update, Microsoft has added quite a few new features, including some that missed out on the April update. They’ve taken the first step towards an improved OS and app design language since Windows 10 first launched, they’ve added more accessibility, more security, and finally added one of the top feature requests since Windows 10 launched. Let’s dig into the changes.
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ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Oh wow, I bet those 10 seconds you save are a life changer.inighthawki - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Oh come on. He's booting into several different OSs a day. That's at least a full minute.ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Yeah, and they are all windoze 10, which saves that much time :)I was talking about the boot time difference relative to w7, not the overall boot time.
I usually run at least 2-3 OS in the same time, it is much faster and far more usable when you use virtual machines rather than booting one OS at a time. You get to use them in parallel and also avoid the mobo post time. The only downside is you need plenty of ram.
ddrіver - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Well, not actually every few months but easily every couple of days.ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Windoze 10 is a great OS, I just has an amazing experience with it the other day with its latest and greatest iteration.A laptop was behaving weirdly, so I decided to do some checkups, beginning with a disk check.
Clicking to run the disk check, I was told that there is no need to run it because the disk is OK.
I insisted to run it nonetheless, and to automatically fix errors.
About 1 second in the check, I was told that the error check cannot continue because the drive contains errors, and to run it again after I fix the errors.
Great functionality, I have to admit. It's like ordering pizza and they tell you they can't deliver you pizza because you have no pizza, and to call back again when you have the pizza.
And what stunning graphics design, for example the settings dialogs are literally just a white background with 3 columns of text. It is like looking at HTML without the CSS styling applied. Just pathetic and hideous.
And in an all-too-typical for m$ fashion, they are more invested into introducing even more useless bloatware.
ddrіver - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Then again I haven't actually done any troubleshooting without Google for so long... Google 1, M$ 0.And they could make those Windoze 10 menus with gold and glitter and they'd still suck. Because they're M$.
ddriver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
LOL, I have a copy-troll now.ddrіver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
Mispost.jardows2 - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Protected folder option - great! Going to be checking this out and enabling on all my computers. I wonder how it works with network mapped drives? Will this folder have to be selected as a protected folder on all PC's that have write access?peevee - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Brett, where are multiple Linux flavors?