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They sometimes include security patches for Windows vulnerabilities.Ĭumulative is a label Microsoft plasters on a lot of updates. They're typically distributed several times each month and always contain what Microsoft terms "quality improvements," which is fancy-talk for bug fixes.
#Wokabulary windows update
In the Windows Update Catalog - an official distribution portal for all updates - "Cumulative" applies only to certain updates for Windows 10 and various server products, including Windows Server 2019 and Server 2016. Instead, it was after feedback for "Cumulative," with a capital "C," in the questionnaire. The old way of patching "resulted in fragmentation, where different PCs could have a different set of updates installed, leading to multiple potential problems," said a Microsoft product marketing manager in 2016 as he announced the change.īut the two broader definitions of "cumulative" were not what Microsoft was asking about in the survey.
#Wokabulary windows windows 7
When Microsoft added Windows 7 to the we're-now-doing-cumulative-updates list, raising Cain among users who for decades could pick and choose which fixes to apply, the firm told them patching was now an all-or-nothing affair, emphasizing the "packaged into a single update" definition. Not surprisingly, the two definitions overlap, but Microsoft's explainers have stressed one over the other when that's suited them. "Each cumulative update includes the changes and fixes from all previous updates" is how Microsoft explains it.
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Microsoft defines "cumulative update" both as a collection of fixes - as when it describes it as something "in which many fixes to improve the quality and security of Windows are packaged into a single update" - and as an all-encompassing update that includes not only the latest changes but also all those from that product's past. We'll update - pun unintended - as necessary. We'll try our best to put some meat on the terminology bones, but honestly, Microsoft's lexicon is so obtuse, so confusing, so contradictory, so. Yet understanding the updates, knowing what is which and what for, is more important than ever, even if Microsoft doesn't pause to explain the differences.
#Wokabulary windows Patch
Where once there was but a single kind of update, the kind that showed up each second Tuesday to patch vulnerabilities, now there are multiples, enough that Microsoft has come to label some with letters of the alphabet. Since Windows 10's introduction nearly four years ago, Microsoft has multiplied not only the number of updates - raising feature-changing upgrades by a factor of six, for instance - but has also increased the kinds of updates. But it didn't bother to define those choices. Microsoft's questionnaire asked participants to choose the types of updates they installed. Microsoft offered five possible responses. What types of updates do you install? (Check all that apply.) That one question encapsulated the struggle Windows users deal with in updating and upgrading the operating system. One question of 26 asked by Microsoft in a survey about experiences with Windows Update.