What determines if you get a cumulative update?

I'm curious about how MS decides your machine is ok to get a cumulative upgrade. Does anyone know?

I have an ancient laptop that must be more than 12 years old and it's running Win10 but with very few other applications. It seems to receive the updates reasonably soon after release - currently its on 1809.

My workstation, which is where my real work is done always lags behind and its currently at 1803.

I'm not saying I want the CUs, in fact I rather not have them at all, and I turn off as many functions in Win10 as I can, including telemetry.

Having a better understanding of the decision process might help me to put off the updates for as long as possible - if not forever.

Thanks for you input

Thanks for the reply, Ken.

I guess I did mean Feature Updates.

Using the term AI in the same sentence as Microsoft is bit of an oxymoron. It's not really AI but just a big look up table

If this is the case then I wonder if blocking telemetry affects the ability to get further Feature Updates - I'm not totally convinced but it may explain some of the delay between my workstation and the laptop which is not blocking anything.

FWIW - My workstation is using Home where as my play laptop is Pro and I see the defer feature is as you say only for 365 days.

I guess part of MS's policy with 10 is not the usual 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' but 'if it ain't broke it doesn't have enough features'

Once again thanks

Sam Vimes said:

... It's not really AI but just a big look up table

Ah, but it is 'AI' - or rather 'Machine Learning' as Microsoft call it. That 'look up table' is AI-generated, based on all the telemetry MS gathers.

Of four machines I had on 1809, only one was offered the 1903 Features update through windows update. I had some minor Intel display driver issues on that machine, so decided to roll back to 1809 until they are resolved. A few days ago that particular machine stopped showing 1903 as available in windows update, looks like the ML has got round to adding that model to its 'look up table'.

...and now one more of my machines is showing 1903 as available, in this case a VM running 1809 Home.

Ah, but it is 'AI' - or rather 'Machine Learning' as Microsoft call it. That 'look up table' is AI-generated, based on all the telemetry MS gathers.

We could get into a long debate about what is and isn't AI but I'm pretty sure that slurping up data isn't AI. It may be the input to help build such systems but for me the real AI bit is what it determines from that data.

We've had databases for years and nobody called them AI.

Sam Vimes said:

We could get into a long debate about what is and isn't AI but I'm pretty sure that slurping up data isn't AI.....

Debate it with MS then, not me...

Microsoft said:

Our AI/Machine Learning approach started with a pilot program during the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update rollout. We studied characteristics of devices that data indicated had a great update experience and trained our model to spot and target those devices. In our limited trial during the Fall Creators Update rollout, we consistently saw a higher rate of positive update experiences for devices identified using the AI model, with fewer rollbacks, uninstalls, reliability issues, and negative user feedback. For the April 2018 Update rollout, we substantially expanded the scale of AI by developing a robust AI machine learning model to teach the system how to identify the best target devices based on our extensive listening systems.

AI powers Windows 10 April 2018 Update rollout