Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Available Oct 17

MS announced today that the Redstone 3 branch of Windows 10 called the Fall Creators Update will be available to the public on Oct 17.

 Back on Aug 23, I speculated that it may be late September or even early October for the release as MS is coordinating not only Windows 10 readiness, but also a new version of Office, new hardware platforms from key vendors running the new 8th Gen Core CPUs as well as a group of new Mixed Reality (MR) headsets from HP, Dell, Asus and others.  

 So this is a bit later than I expected.  In my testing RS3 has been stable for quite some time and MS has been focusing pretty heavily on bug fixes - with a recent increased pace of builds coming out with 10 - 20 fixes per build.  

 With that said - we are still 6+ weeks away from production release.  As with most branches I expect the actual "production" build to be available to Fast Ring folks 1 - 2 week prior and that may blow up my guess that the production build number would be under 16300 - but it will be close.

 The real question for MS here is the MR play.  Will folks really buy it.   I've been looking at the new headsets announced by Dell, Lenovo, etc and while they do incorporate external cameras to ease set up and are relatively inexpensive @ $399 or $449 with additional handheld controllers - they are hardwired to your laptop or desktop and it looks as though MS is pushing that you do have the latest 8th Gen Core machines to have a good experience.  

 So the question to me will be one of overall usability.  These sets connect to the HMDI video output on your device - and I haven't seen cord length specs yet - but I expect something in the 4 - 5m length.  In the demo videos I've seen the user is standing near a desk with a laptop and a cord running to it.  

There does appear to be a good amount of content coming - MS shows a Logo screen with some 60 content providers and so I expect you'll have some good choice.  

 Bottom line is - it looks as though in order to coordinate all the new devices, content, Office, etc - that the Fall Creators Update will be released in Mid-October.  How well MR generates new laptop / pc sales will be interesting to see.


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