Finally You Can DELAY WINDOWS UPDATES

Microsoft gives you back control – if you know how

Microsoft may finally start letting Windows 10 Home users delay Feature updates, although for nowhere near as long as the Pro version allows.

A preview build of the April 2019 Update (version 1903), released to Windows Insiders in January, lets users pause updates for seven days.

This is much shorter than the 365 days offered to Pro users, but is still an improvement on Home’s current options, which let you reschedule a time within six days for your PC to restart and install an update.

Home users can also use the ‘Active hours’ option to set a time period (up to 18 hours) during which they don’t want updates to install (follow Microsoft’s instructions at www.snipca.com/30336). Many users set their active hours to daytime (for example, 6am to 12pm), so updates are installed only during the night, when they’re less likely to be using their PC.

Microsoft hasn’t confirmed whether the seven-day pause will be in the April 2019 Update, but it would be unusual for the company to add then withdraw such a much-wanted tool.

It will hope the option reassures users who are nervous about installing forthcoming Feature updates following the problems caused by the October 2018 Update (version 1809).

By pausing the update for a week, users will be able to wait for Microsoft to fix any early problems, although some bugs take much longer to emerge.

To turn it on in the Insider version, click Settings, ‘Update & Security’, Windows Update, then click ‘Pause updates for 7 days’ (see screenshot).

When you activate it, Microsoft tells you missed updates need to be installed before the pause option becomes available again, suggesting you can choose it just once per update.

Windows ‘reserves’ 7GB on your PC

The company is also taking measures to ensure the April 2019 Update installs more smoothly. It said Windows 10 updates will now “reserve” at least 7GB of storage on your PC to make sure there’s enough room for the installation.

Writing online ( www. snipca.com/30338), Microsoft said Windows would also use the reserved storage to make sure its tools had enough space to run properly, improving “the day-to-day function of your PC”.

It added: “With reserved storage, updates, apps, temporary files, and caches are less likely to take away from valuable free space and should continue to operate as expected”.

Feature updates will get priority over everything else, deleting extras like temporary files if necessary to make room.

Pensioners are almost seven times more likely to share fake news on Facebook than people aged 18 to 29 - in the US at least.

The conclusion comes from a study of 1,750 Facebook users during the 2016 presidential election, carried out by Princeton and New York University researchers. They checked how many users forwarded stories from 21 websites classified as “intentionally or systematically factually inaccurate”.

It found that 11 per cent of over-65s shared links to fake stories, much higher than the three per cent of those aged 18-29. Age was a better predictor of whether people shared false stories than any other characteristic, such as gender or education.

The researchers said the older generations’ lack of “digital literacy” meant they were less likely to spot fake news. Another possibility, they suggested, is that the specific way memory deteriorates with age makes it harder for people to detect “illusions of truth”.

But they added that sharing false content was overall “a relatively rare activity”, with only 8.5 per cent of people doing it, across all age groups.