When Microsoft announced the RTM of Windows 8.1 a couple of weeks ago it was made very clear that the final version of Windows 8.1 would not be made available to anyone but OEM’s at that time.
The rest of the world, including developers and IT Pros, would have to wait until the General Availability of Windows 8.1 on 18 October 2013.
Since then there have been plenty of leaked ISO’s across the web to use, that is if you are willing to put all your systems at risk, but I am pretty sure it was not developers and IT Pros grabbing those for testing purposes.
So when the news broke yesterday from Microsoft that the RTM bits of Windows 8.1 were going to be made available on MSDN and TechNet cheers erupted from developers and IT Pros all over the world.
However, the RTM bits of Windows 8.1 was not the only treat devs and IT Pros got from Microsoft either.
In a blog post on his MSDN Blog, Steve Guggenheimer revealed that the Visual Studio 2013 RC and Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM software would also be made available for download alongside the Windows 8.1 RTM bits.
So your feedback has been heard – now go make those apps and other pieces of software ready for GA on 18 October since there is no excuse otherwise.
