zdnet[.]com/article/microsoft-is-changing-how-it-delivers-windows-updates-4-things-you-need-to-know/
With Win7 every update was complete and self-contained -- towards the end, if you installed a fresh copy of Win7 you'd spend hours installing updates in order, one after the other. Win10 uses cumulative updates, meaning that if you just install the latest one, it *should* install every missing update up until the current date. That's more efficient, but Windows Update has to spend time determining what updates are needed, as well as downloading extra stuff to make that work. Now Microsoft is going to designate some updates as checkpoints. Updates released after a checkpoint are only going to include updates back to the last checkpoint. As pointed out in their blog, Microsoft's goal is to reduce the size of the updates we download, and I assume save them bandwidth which saves them money. Microsoft claims the only people who will notice a difference are the IT Admins who provide updates to their organization via their own servers, but this is Microsoft... they're adding potential complications to an update process that's already glitchy with updates that today are prone to problems.
