That's a scary low amount of bandwidth for a modern game development business to operate on. That's barely OK for a single computer, and you've got six. :(Some of the more recent editions of Windows have an option buried somewhere that sounded like you could have one computer share its update files with others on the same network.

Yeah we've got that option on, doesn't help when one PC downloading without regard for bandwidth kills us.
Welcome to Australia, where spending $50B on copper because fibre is obsolete, to get everyone on 25/1mbps by 2020 is a popular government policy.
We just moved from one office to another within the city center, and went from $800/mo 100/100 fibre, to $90/mo 10/1 4G while we petition the building's owners to connect to the fibre network...
And yeah, I'm paying professionals so if someone can't work for 15 minutes because their OS doesn't listen to me, that can straight up cost me $20.

Such wasteful disregard for electricity! Turn your computer off when you go home! When you do that there is a helpful "Update and shut down" option that will apply the patches while it shuts down.

If I'm in the middle of a task, I'll sleep/hibernate my PC so that my IDE(s)/git history/etc is all right there (or even a debugging session!) to aid in getting everything back into my head in the morning. It's the difference between being productive immediately or spending 15 minutes remembering exactly where I was up to. When Windows fucks with that plan without asking me, I can calculate the direct financial cost :P
Even without hibernating/sleeping the PC, the cost of leaving it on overnight is maybe $0.50.

I've just spent the better part of 6 hours trying to get my computer working after this update... (2 hours of that was sleeping while a thing spun around on a black screen in vain). I had my windows dongle out trying to repair unsuccessfully, then I tried to create a new one from another PC, I'd been trying all sorts and it didn't help that all I saw was a black screen so I had no idea if I was turning my computer off in the middle of it doing something which no doubt made matters worse. In the end I believe windows had decided to send my display to some port that wasn't connected so all I ever saw was black after restarting but even plugging monitors into the other connections didn't help (I could often see the bios/boot screen but only black instead of windows). It took a fair bit of removing my GFX card, using the on-board to change something, then putting my GFX card back in and trying it, then removing etc etc..

Pick "not now", then immediately save your work, close all your apps, then go back to the update screen and hit the restart now button, OR go to the shutdown/reboot menu and pick the 'Update and restart" option. Typical 'Patch Tuesdays' take less than 5-10 minutes to apply.

Yeah, this works but I'm not used to seeing "update & restart view. The start view never consolidated in my head because like Hodgman I set my power settings to Hibernate when I close my Laptop lid so I can quickly and easily start off from where I left. It saves a lot of hassles that way, instead of trying to remember where you left off everytime. I only ever shut down when its absolutely a last resort to make things work again - like a complete freeze even the cursor permanently freezing or some weird crash

Such wasteful disregard for electricity!

And btw hibernate doesn't use up power at all. When I close the lid and detach the power cable, and come back after X hours my battery remains at 100%, where is 1 < X < 20

if I don't like windows updates at all, I should be able to turn them off regardless of how important they are (being deemed) - thats my personal choice, if I get a virus afterwards that could have been avoided, its my own fault - did I mentioned I don't like being patronized, even if its for safties sake?

This is the same kind of logic anti-vaccine people use, and it's flawed for broadly the same main reason -- herd immunity. If you lived disconnected from the internet, you could install all the viruses and malware you wanted for all I care -- but you don't.

Not all viruses are made to do something to the host they infect. Bot-nets, DDOS attacks and similar are becoming increasingly powerful and dangerous, even potentially fatal (when targetting infrastructure and emergency responders or hospitals, etc.). This week's global malware/ransomware attacks should be a potent reminder about this.

If people like you whining on forums about forced security updates hurting your computer-savy pride and feeling patronized is the price to pay for upping the ratio of patched hosts, then that's easily worth it.

The sooner people (and especially corporations and IoT device manufacturers) understand that global internet security isn't something you should be able to opt out of because you're "savy enough", the better.

That said, I am all for making patching less intrusive. There are definitely times where it would be a lot more convenient to not update right there and then, and making patching a less intrusive process can only help.

Well said Lactose! And exactly right. That is exactly the anti-vac's mentality. If we could detect your PC was unpatched and your ISP cut off service I would be fine with you not participating in updates. But since you're computer is most likely being used as another front to attack mine, no thanks.

This is the same kind of logic anti-vaccine people use, and it's flawed for broadly the same main reason -- herd immunity.

That's an argument for protection, but absolutely is not an argument against personal choice being sacrosanct.
The modern anti-vax movement is completely idiotic, but it is everyone's right to make their own choices regarding their body, and their right to refuse medical treatment. If we detain un-vax'ed people and force them to undergo treatment then that is a terrible, terrible authoritarian line to have crossed. Destroying the balance between the individual and the group to the point where individuals do not own their own bodies is an extremely dangerous philosophy to uphold.
Likewise with computers, which are ever more so becoming extensions of our bodies... If someone wants to control what software they run on their PC, they have that right. You cannot force them to run a particular piece of software because of your own fears.... However, Microsoft is well within their rights to make a shitty OS that tramples all over this right, because this hypothetical PC user is free to boycott MS and use some obscure compiled-from-source-code Linux distro :lol: That said, it's still a dick move and completely patronizing for MS to force all of it's users to allow MS to have a back-door into our PC's that they will use to protect us from evildoers who wish to install back-doors into our PC's... but that's the modern world -- by buying Intel CPU's and MS OS's, we're all agreeing to give the NSA control over our PC's "for own own protection"... Airstrip One, here we are.

This is the same kind of logic anti-vaccine people use, and it's flawed for broadly the same main reason -- herd immunity.

That's an argument for protection, but absolutely is not an argument against personal choice being sacrosanct.
The modern anti-vax movement is completely idiotic, but it is everyone's right to make their own choices regarding their body, and their right to refuse medical treatment. If we detain un-vax'ed people and force them to undergo treatment then that is a terrible, terrible authoritarian line to have crossed. Destroying the balance between the individual and the group to the point where individuals do not own their own bodies is an extremely dangerous philosophy to uphold.
Likewise with computers, which are ever more so becoming extensions of our bodies... If someone wants to control what software they run on their PC, they have that right. You cannot force them to run a particular piece of software because of your own fears....

I'm not exactly sure which "line" this would be crossing that wasn't similarly crossed a long time ago by things like forcing people to wear seat belts while driving, have mandatory vehicle safety inspections, etc. There's plenty of regulation regarding what chemicals people are allowed to ingest, too, and that seems a lot more in line with "owning [our] own bodies" than software patches.

To be clear, I'm not making a philosophical argument. I just think that it's a bit melodramatic to act as if mandatory software patches infringe on your individual rights in a way that a million other things don't already do that. Stealing a phrase from XKCD, it's a weird hill to die on.