I just finished writing patch reports for Windows systems I must support for my clients or for my own business. After you put together all the Vistas, XP’s, 2000’s, 2003’s, SP’s, R2’s, x64’s, and IE6 and 7’s, the list of patches that need testing is quite long. And confusing.
Fortunately I don’t have to support any Itanium systems. Nor do I have to deal with XP Media Center, XP Tablet, Small Business Server, Home-editions, or non-English versions. So there are people much worse off than me. I do, however, have to deal with patching Office XP, 2003 and 2007.

And it seems that very soon we will have to address Windows 7, which could come as soon as next year, and Microsoft has extended the availability of XP home for ultra-low-cost PC’s up to June 2010 so those XP patches could still be around for quite some time.

Nevertheless, I imagine that my headache is nothing compared to what Microsoft has to deal with getting ready for Patch Tuesday. While Microsoft has made tremendous progress in patch management over the last five years, this obviously is an area with lots of room for improvement.