All consumers will be required to update to Windows 8.1

Feb 17, 2014 06:30 GMT  ·  By

Retail sales of Windows 8 will officially come to an end on October 31, as Microsoft continues efforts to move all users to the newly-launched Windows 8.1.

As WinBeta noted, the Windows lifecycle fact sheet has been quietly updated recently to state that Windows 8 retail sales will be stopped this year, while the date when sales for PCs with Windows 8 preinstalled will come to an end is yet to be determined.

By October, however, everybody still running Windows 8 needs to download and install Windows 8.1, the free update that’s being offered to all users via the integrated store.

Windows 8.1 comes with quite a lot of improvements, including a Start button, new Start screen customization options, plenty of performance enhancements and a significantly improved Modern experience.