Microsoft Releases Massive Windows 8 Update Prior to General Availability
By: Arie Slob
Last Tuesday Microsoft announced it was releasing "a set of improvements" to Windows 8 dealing with performance, power management, battery efficiency, media playback and compatibility.
Previously Microsoft would wait till the first service pack update to make those kinds of changes/updates or release smaller compatibility updates over time. Windows Vista got its first service pack around 13 months after general availability, for Windows 7 this was 16 months.
Steven Sinofsky, Windows president in a blog post explained this change: "With every release of Windows we have had approximately 8-12 weeks from when we released the code to OEMs and manufacturing and when the product was available on new PCs and for retail customers. This time has historically been used to match newly developed PCs, which can include a variety of new or enhanced components, drivers, and companion software, with the final code for Windows. Because these hardware and software components are brand new, it could be the case that they uncover the need for changes and improvements to Windows in the areas of fundamentals."
"We would often create dozens of changes for each OEM for these new PCs. Those changes would be deployed during manufacturing of those PCs and thus would be invisible to customers. While those changes could potentially apply to a broader range of PCs, we did not have in place the testing and certification to broadly distribute these updates. As a result, customers would have to wait until the first service pack to see these enhancements. We know many folks would spend time working to uncover these OEM enhancements in a desire to have the most up to date Windows."
According to Sinofsky Windows engineers have created tools and processes to be able to deliver these "post-RTM" updates sooner than a service pack.
If you are an MSDN or enterprise customer, these updates will be available for your Windows 8 PCs via Windows Update as of today (October 9), following Microsoft's standard cadence for Windows Updates on the second Tuesday of each month at about 10:00am (PDT).
The update is listed in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article KB2756872 and can also be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.
The update is 97.4 MB for the 32-bit version or 162.8 MB for the 64-bit version of Windows 8.