Windows 10 Updates To Shrink In Size

For what seems like a long time now, Microsoft have been assuring its users that smaller updates for its flagship Windows 10 operating system were on their way.

Now it seems they might just about to make good on that promise.

The Redmond, Washington based tech giant has begun testing a new Unified Update Platform (UUP) that should make a big difference to update download sizes.  In a blog post on November 3^rd, Microsoft’s director of program management, Bill Karagounis, said that:

“One of the biggest community and customer benefits of UUP is the reduction you’ll see in download size on PCs.  We have converged technologies in our build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for all devices built on the Mobile and PC OS.”

Great! What does it mean for me though?

Well, as Bill goes on to say in his post:

“As we rollout UUP, this will eventually be impactful for PCs where users can expect their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another.”

The real upshot is that this is good news for users with internet data caps and/or low bandwidth connections.  It will also allow Microsoft to deliver changes to computers running Windows 10 a lot faster.

“We have also revamped how devices check for updates, making them more efficient. As we move to UUP, we are reducing the update data sent to client devices as well as the amount of processing we are doing on devices, this especially important for devices built on the Mobile OS.”

Another bonus feature of using UUP is that more of the processing load will be done by Microsoft itself, which will lead to faster checks for update checks.

Microsoft currently rolls out new beta builds to Windows Insiders on a weekly basis, and has successfully updated more than 400 million Windows 10 devices.

UUP has already started to be deployed for Microsoft’s mobile devices, and Insider desktop users can expect to be part of the trialling UUP process before the year is out.