Windows Update - Reboot as soon as possible when prompted

I see this incident more as a "lessons learned", than a design flaw that millions of users are suffering with.  In the original post the Microsoft Update (MU) icon had been flashing for a few hours.  Maybe a reboot could have taken place while at lunch or when taking a break at work. Sometimes corporate group policies are indeed rigid and may not allow flexibilities for MU to just notify or download. Some "lessons learned" include:

Reboot ASAP - so that the new settings can take place immediately and avoid instability issues that rebooting the applied updates would resolve.  Still, I've been in situations where I've had to delay reboots due to time sensitive work I had to accomplish.  However, when possible always reboot right away.

 When you see the Microsoft Update shield or prompts to reboot, SAVE all of your work right away to prevent any loss of information.  I also start shutting down anything that's non-essential in preparation for a reboot.

How I got attacked by Windows Update - Tales from the Evil Empire
http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2010/01/22/how-i-got-attacked-by-windows-update.aspx

QUOTE: I was writing a wiki page when it happened. The system restart dialog from Windows Update had been blinking helplessly in the task bar for a few hours as I didn’t have time for a reboot yet. And then, right in the middle of a sentence, the effing dialog decides that I’ve been ignoring it for too long, puts itself in front and gives itself focus. 

You can see what happened then. My fingers were continuing to type, not realizing that the wiki page had gone to the back. Now the thing is, space is a fairly common key to hit when you’re writing English. But in dialogs, that’s also the key that triggers the default button. Which, in the case of that particular Windows Update dialog, is “Restart”.  So before I realized what was going on, I was seeing all my windows close, including of course the wiki page I was working on. No application should ever be allowed to steal the focus.