Users appear resigned to patching software ad nauseam, though one large user welcomes Microsoft Corp.'s latest attempts to ease the pain of implementing fixes.

Microsoft is rationalizing its distribution of software patches for Windows and its applications and scheduling major non-critical patch releases less often.

The number of ways Microsoft distributed patches kept increasing -- to eight, the company says. Microsoft aims to bring it down to two by May -- one for operating systems and one for applications.

As well as the sheer number of fixes, issues with side-effects of patches had arisen, particularly shortcomings in backward compatibility, Microsoft New Zealand director, enterprise sales and partner group, Terry Allen acknowledges.

By Stephen Bell at security.itworld.com

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