Microsoft has back-pedalled slightly on its surprising policy of killing off patches for Windows 8.1 users who haven’t moved to Windows 8.1 Update. While it originally said that change would happen after this week’s Patch Tuesday update for end users, it has now extended support for 8.1 for another month.
Picture: Jake Rains
Microsoft announced the switch in a post on its Windows Experience blog:
While we believe the majority of people have received the update, we recognize that not all have. Having our customers running their devices with the latest updates is super important to us. And we’re committed to helping ensure their safety. As a result, we’ve decided to extend the requirement for our consumer customers to update their devices to the Windows 8.1 Update in order to receive security updates another 30 days to June 10th.
So that means Windows 8.1 won’t die for another month (a concession that had already been offered to enterprise customers), but it will die. After that date, patches will only be offered for Windows 8.1 Update and (this remains odd) Windows 8.
Windows 8.1 Update Requirement Extended [Windows Experience Blog]
Comments
5 responses to “Microsoft Will Patch Windows 8.1 For A Little Longer”
Wait, what? Maybe I’m a bit out of the loop, but there’s a difference?
Yes, Windows 8.1 Update is an update of Windows 8.1, which is an update of Windows 8.
Yo dawg.. herd you liek updates..
Yeah, I think you need to manually install it because it’s ~800mb. It’s worth it though. Some performance fixes, security fixes and some much-needed UI tweaks (though not the update that adds the start menu back in).
I want to say it’s basically a service pack for 8.1, but that would imply that 8.1 isn’t just a service pack for 8.
Horrible naming here. Try and google Windows 8.1 Update and see if you can figure out what articles/forum comments are about the update that was for Windows 8.1 or the update that was called Windows 8.1 Update.
Agreed. Why didn’t they call it Service Pack or even Update 1 (and any number) but just Update is confusing.