The radical new system envisions more frequent maintenance releases, quicker security fixes and even new features on a rolling basis. It's a far cry from what Windows users have grown accustomed to over the past two decades. There's even new terminology to describe what Microsoft has planned, just to further confuse things. You'll be hearing a lot about branches and rings in the months ahead.
Here's the basics of how the system will work, based on what we know so far from Microsoft:
One final note: While users may be able to delay exactly when they get updates and how fast they apply them, they can't avoid them all together without losing access to security updates.
With reports from Gregg Keizer at Computerworld
Ken Mingis