Welcome to Windows 8.1 General Availability Week which is officially this coming Friday. In the mean time there is plenty to get caught up on from the last couple of days as this week begins.
GA Rollup A Provides Updates to Windows 8.1 RTM (Windows Supersite) – Paul Thurrott revealed late Friday that there would be a package of updates waiting for users as they install Windows 8.1 once it becomes available to the public at the end of this week. Paul says that these updates impact nearly every part of Windows 8.1. Over the weekend a copy of this GA Rollup A leaked to the Internet and my recommendation is that you leave it alone. The real verified copy will be here in just a few days.
AT&T Axing Traditional Data Plans for New Customers in Favor of Its Mobile Share Plans (All Things D) – When I read this story I tweeted that I was very happy to be grand-fathered on my AT&T Unlimited Data Plan for the last 9 years and counting. Anyway, if you are a new AT&T customer you will have to select one of AT&T’s Mobile Share plans for your data option when you sign up for their service.
Windows 8.1 Support Lifecycle Policy (Microsoft) – A support page popped up over the weekend at Microsoft’s support site that provided clarity on how long Windows 8 users will have to get upgraded to Windows 8.1. According to the one paragraph page you will have two years from General Availability of 8.1 which means those upgrades have to happen NLT 18 October 2015. Windows 8.1 lifecycle support will still end on 1/10/2023.
I suspect this will be a busy week with Windows 8.1 GA approaching and all the expected hardware announcements to start next week off.
Stay safe out there.
