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Microsoft today at TechEd finally took the wraps off Microsoft Update, the new one-stop-shop for updates to everything Microsoft makes. The new system works with Windows' existing automatic update system, so its all good.

he only problem, its available at the unfriendly URL of:

http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/

With Microsoft Update at that URL and Windows Update at http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/, you'd think http://update.microsoft.com/ would be a landing page that lets you choose one or the other, but nope, it just redirects to Windows Update with no indication that Microsoft Update even exists (the redirect points to MU after you've used it). Considering Microsoft wants everyone to use this, they really need to make it easy for people to find it.
On my first running, Microsoft Update found six high priority updates for Office. Three were security updates, two involved French spell- and grammar-checking (no, I didn't bother installing) and the last was an update for Smart Tags (What the hell? I thought those were tossed out after all the controversy?). There was also a six-month old driver update for my Intel graphics hardware that Windows Update had never offered. Needless to say, I was very pleased that I was getting these updates I had never bothered to get in the past.

You can set Microsoft Update to offer you beta and pre-release products. You can also disable Microsoft Update in the settings, and go back to regular old Windows Update. This is useful because once you've used Microsoft Update, http://update.microsoft.com/ always redirects to it, and not Windows Update. Still, the next time everyone goes to that site, they should be asked whether they want Microsoft Update, since otherwise they will have to find it on their own.

No matter what, this is a useful release, bringing updates for all Microsoft products to a place people will actually look for it. The only thing that could make it better would be if it offered updates for non-Microsoft products. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single good reason to use the old system.

Also:Q&A with Microsoft's Gordon Mangione on how this and Windows Server Update Services will benefit businessesMicrosoft Watch

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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