Microsoft announced a significant improvement coming to Windows Update. With Windows 10 Creators Update, update delivery will be faster once again due to reduced size of updates. Microsoft is working to use delta updates for consumer PCs once again.
Advertisеment
Microsoft started delta updates with Windows XP and continued to deliver them for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. However, when they switched to cumulative updates for Windows 10, the delta algorithm apparently got removed. Now Microsoft is claiming that they've added delta updates for cumulative updates too.The new update system was activated along with the release of Windows 10 build 14959, the latest preview build of Windows 10 Creators Update. It is called Unified Update Platform (UUP).
UUP will be available for every Windows 10 device including PCs, tablets and laptops, smartphones, IoT and Hololens devices. As of this writing, Microsoft is going to enable delta updates only for Windows 10 Mobile insiders. Later, it will be activated for the rest of Windows 10 Insiders.
Finally, UUP will reach the production branch with the RTM release of Windows 10 Creators Update, which is expected to be rolled out in March 2017.
Delta updates are relatively small packages which include only the differences between installed and new files. Microsoft noted that this will reduce the size of updates up to 35%. This will affect the update download and installation time, since smaller updates will be transferred and installed much faster.
The required delta value will be calculated by the improved Windows Update service. It will also allow upgrading the existing operating system to the most recent one smoothly and quickly. However, if the installed build of Windows 10 is very old, the update size can still be large because many changes would need to be delivered to the target OS.
Users with slow or limited Internet who install all updates consequentially will benefit from this change. This change in Windows Update will be welcomed by many users.
What about you? Are you happy with the upcoming change?
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!
Advertisеment
That’s a nice initiative taken by microsoft. People in some regions have to rely on costly mobile data. This will help them. Also microsoft should optimize the amount of CPU resources they take while configuring the installed updates, specially the big cumulative updates. In the process, windows installer uses very high CPU for very long time, which heats up the device and puts stress on the system. In some cases it causes overheating and does damage to the hardwares.