Sick of application forcing you to restart your PC after installing patches the operating system? I have a painful experience when the system automatically rebooted after installing Acrobat Reader’s patch, and I lost all my unsaved data.

Fortunately, the next Windows, Windows Vista, will have a new restart manager called “Freeze Dry“.

Perhaps in most instances, users won’t have to restart Windows Vista after installing the patches or updating an application even while the application is running. In fact, Windows Vista is doing a workaround trick by replacing the patched file and wait for the next time the application is restarted. It is at least useful for some people.

Quoted:
The improved patching technology can be helpful for many consumers, but looks to be especially useful in corporate environments where IT managers automatically install patches and updates on machines. People who leave documents open and unsaved on those machines today run the risk of losing data if their system is automatically updated.