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Should MS open up Windows Update to 3rd parties?

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Carol Haynes:
I have to confess I am not that interested in MS cloud services! Been badly bitten in the past with the community stuff they produced (ie. they lost all of my content and on complaining I got a shrug and couldn't give a damn episode). Also can't stand the way everything gets bound to Internet Explorer or you suffer from their oddities.

Stoic Joker:
It works out great...and takes up no space at all!
-Stoic Joker (February 08, 2011, 11:26 AM)
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You are right of course - I just object to wasting my bandwidth on downloading DVD images when I have better things to do. Its fine when you super fast internet access but when it takes half a day per file ...
-Carol Haynes (February 08, 2011, 11:37 AM)
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+1!  ;D

It's not quite that slow for me. But I still batch them a few at a time for overnight when I don't need something 'immediately.'-40hz (February 08, 2011, 12:43 PM)
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Me too. We have a T1 here at the office, which really ain't that fast by todays standards - But we need the guaranteed upstream for misc.. If I really gotta get something quick, I'll RDP into my home office and setup the transfer from there (and go grab it at lunch or on the way to where ever).

mwb1100:
One thing Microsoft *should* do is provide a framework/interface/control panel for auto updates so that there's one place to go to manage these things.  Actually, MS should have done that a long time ago - back when they provided a standard place to go to uninstall.  They don't need to host the update, just provide a standard control panel to manage updates for installed software.

3rd parties could still decide to do things their own way (just like they can for uninstall), but there would be incentive for vendors to plug into the 'standard' way to manage updates.

It would be quite nice to be able to go to one place to be able to enable/disable auto updates, or manually launch update processes.  All those stupid little icons that insist they be allowed to show up in the notification area and those annoying pop-up messages can just go away since they'd have no reason to exist anymore.

A guy can dream, can't he?

JavaJones:
mwb1100 hits the nail squarely on the head and said exactly what I was going to say. Provide an update management *system* that unifies it all in one place, provides mechanisms for security and verifiability (e.g. similar to how browsers work with certificates, encryption, etc.), but does not *host* anything nor specify or approve what apps can use the system. Just like the program manager, any app that's installed can show up there, maybe even make it a mandatory part of being installed in Windows just like an entry in program manager (or incorporate it into the same UI as an updates tab or something); apps that don't implement auto-update are free to simply list a web URL to download updates if they prefer.

So developers are free to use (or not use) it just like Windows program manager (install/uninstall), the sound or graphics APIs or, or newer stuff like voice synthesis and recognition APIs. These are all services the OS provides, but surely nobody (who is reasonable and not an idiot) blames Microsoft if the app they're using has a bad UI (displayed using Windows APIs), bad voice recognition support, or a crappy installer/uninstaller (I'm looking at you HP and big antivirus app manufacturers!).

I think what makes this less than a no-brainer "YES!" answer for everyone is the idea that app updates would be part of *Microsoft Update*. If they are instead simply displayed and accessible in a Windows control panel applet, does that not make huge amounts of sense? The very act of providing an API and control panel for this means many, many more devs would take advantage better updating functionality. Just as has been true with the many other APIs MS has provided over the years.

- Oshyan

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