Microsoft has finally seen fit to answer two of the biggest questions users have had about it’s upcoming Windows Blue update for Windows 8: what’s the official name of the product and how much will it cost?
According to a post at the Blogging Windows, Windows Blue will be officially known as Windows 8.1 to consumers, and be available for free to all users to download from the Windows Store. While we suspect only tech enthusiasts were really hung up on the marketing name for the update at this point in the software’s life cycle, it’s still great to finally be able to put a name to the software, sort of.
That the update is free will also please many of the Windows 8 users who’d already either paid out of their pocket to update to Microsoft’s latest operating system last fall or who recently purchased a new PC with Windows 8, and thus might be a little upset if they were asked to shell out even more money.
Leaks of the update’s code to torrent sites point to an update that seems to build on the momentum started by it’s predecessor. New features include more customizations for Live Tiles and the Start Screen, built in support for cloud syncing using Microsoft’s SkyDrive service, support for smaller screen sizes and the moving of more settings from the control panel to Windows 8’s Settings area.
Microsoft will make a preview version of Windows 8.1 available to users on June 26th. It will ship in final form to Windows 8 users this fall.