Yesterday was December patch Tuesday in Microsoft world. Over a year ago now, we made the decision to make patching more predictable by only releasing security patches on the second Tuesday of each month. The idea was that if you knew that patches were coming, you could prepare yourself to test and deploy them and maybe build it into your own timetable. Coincidentally, I was looking through the local Irish customer satisfaction survey that we conducted during the Autumn. In the area of security, the issue that came up consistently was patch management. A few people thought that we had made leaps and bounds in how we handle security patches but the majority were dissatisfied with the perceived constant stream of security patches coming from us. My guess is that this is being driven by having the monthly patch release and  I suspect that by the time a series of patches are dowloaded, tested and deployed, the next set of critical patches have rolled around again. I'm genuinely interested in feedback on this - what do you hate about MS security patching? - do you use the technology such as Microsoft update and WSUS  to download and deploy them? Does any other vendor out there do it better than we do? Drop me a mail at mike.hughes@microsoft.com and let me know.

Since it's christmas I'll leave with the (slightly) amusing joke someone emailed to me- I quote "If Microsoft ran Christmas: "each time you bought an ornament, you would have to buy the tree as well. You wouldn't have to take the tree but you would still have to pay for it anyway. Ornament 95 would weigh 1500Kg, would draw enough electricity to power a small town, take up 95% of the space in your living room and would claim to be the first ornamant to use the colours red and green together. It would interrogate your other ornaments to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft ornaments but would have to buy them since 99% of the other tree type only worked with their hooks...." Who says computer jokes aren't funny?