Microsoft Updates Windows 8 Before Final Launch
Improvements would usually be included in an operating system's first service pack.
A few weeks before the official release of Windows 8, Microsoft has released an update for the operating system that delivers improvements in "performance, power management and battery efficiency, media playback, and compatibility."
Through Windows Update, users who are utilizing early versions of the OS will receive a prompt for the update. Microsoft said it'll offer increased power efficiency in order to extend battery life, Windows 8 apps and Start screen performance improvements, improved audio and video playback, as well as improved application and driver compatibility with the forthcoming operating system.
Windows chief Steven Sinofsky said the changes are usually included within an operating system's initial service pack, "[but] during the final months of Windows 8 we challenged ourselves to create the tools and processes to be able to deliver these 'post-RTM' updates sooner than a service pack."
Microsoft has already updated a series of Windows 8 applications. The operating system itself launches on October 26.

Yea not even close to legal, your justification is bad
Not everyone has an SSD.
I just recently upgraded to an SSD and can see the bootup times are much faster, however, with a standard harddrive, it would typically take my computer a few minutes from Windows 7 Flash screen to loading all my taskbar and notification icons (antivirus, steam, etc).
I say you booting up in 15 seconds is simply over exaggerating (for an HDD). Your 9 second claim is way faster than what my Vertex 4 takes (when you take into account POST and windows flash screen and then desktop. Once the desktop is visible, then it may take 9 seconds to load everything and access my browser, but to say it takes 9 seconds from turning on to full Desktop is exaggeration...
Sorry to say, I call BS on your claims.
The update works amazingly well. Windows 8 was already better than Windows 7 from the battery life point of view, and the update seems to try and make it even better.
The updated apps feel more responsive and fluid which is always good. Power off time was also reduced. The system boots up in about 7 seconds on Wind8 instead of almost a minute on Win7, but before the update turning them off took about as long.
all well and good, but they want to force the tablet and phone user interface down out throats while gimping the standard ui...
Made my day. I am testing Windows 8 now for a few weeks. And the start menu is oke*.
If they only made it stay. Right now when i click on a other screen the start menu is gone =(.
*Only for users with 3 or more screens. (4 will do awesome) 1 screen for start and the rest for normal windows.
I agree. I will download it via NewsGroups. I pay to download so i find it legal.
What an ignorant comment. Let me put it in perspective for you.
1. I use a desktop, how does battery life matter to me?
2. Does it really make any, and I mean any difference how quickly my computer loads? Firstly, from the instant I press the power button to the moment I can open Firefox is about 9 seconds under Windows 7. How you were getting more than 60 seconds is beyond me... Even when when I had a HDD as the system drive, it was no more than 15 seconds. So I call your BS on that or you have a crappy system.
3. If an update make an OS feel more "responsive and fluid", I can assure you that there is a major problem with the core code - no update should ever make an OS so much better that the user can actually, notice the difference, unless the patch fixed some sort of critical flaw, but again, you clearly have some issues with telling time seeing that you stated that Windows 7 takes over a minute to boot...
Not everyone has an SSD.
I just recently upgraded to an SSD and can see the bootup times are much faster, however, with a standard harddrive, it would typically take my computer a few minutes from Windows 7 Flash screen to loading all my taskbar and notification icons (antivirus, steam, etc).
I say you booting up in 15 seconds is simply over exaggerating (for an HDD). Your 9 second claim is way faster than what my Vertex 4 takes (when you take into account POST and windows flash screen and then desktop. Once the desktop is visible, then it may take 9 seconds to load everything and access my browser, but to say it takes 9 seconds from turning on to full Desktop is exaggeration...
Sorry to say, I call BS on your claims.
Yea not even close to legal, your justification is bad
Source: Running Windows 8 in VMware Player
Welcome to IT.. Everyone whining and bitching about change need to remember these words, "Adapt or die." If you chose the latter then good for me, I chose to adapt. Let me know if the below line looks familiar, and seems comical to you.
"You'll never need more than 640K of memory"
Now replace that with "You will never need anything greater than windows 7" or "You will never need touch sensors on a desktop."
Plug your kinect into your windows 8 rtm box and you will see what Microsoft has planned. Honestly, I can hardly wait.
http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-ceo-sees-company-becoming-more-apple-002521396--finance.html
That's not a justification, that's just dumb.
Paying for piracy: the other guy is doing it wrong.
Still, I kinda agree on the original post, I dont see why is that bad to take things from huge financial groups. I mean, come on, not everyone is willing to pay extra for something that can perfectly work (given prior research about the method of authentication) with a pirate copy and also reduce budget on parts that actually matter. I know I am not. Im pretty sure that many readers of this site work on 'illegitimate' copies of Windows as well. Be honest, guys.
@Article: Well I think its great! Any improvements are welcome for W8 IMHO. Considering that it is already quite useful for resource-limited machines, further improve that is good news. However, the unavoidable truth is that for MANY users, including me, the product Microsoft offers is more like a toy rather than a workstation. Some comments above reflected that, the thing is a giant smartphone, more like a little girl's social networking machine rather than a ... how to say it, powerhouse simple-UI system with everything developed towards power users.
Aww man, that's what I love of Linux... its just no BS interface, no damn advertising-packed ecosystem, just the muscle of the kernel.
The market spoke. The market likes Apple it's only logical for other companies to follow their path because there's more profit there. That said, they better not f*ck the Surface up. They better price it well
Thankyou!!!! I deal with this every day with all the Linux people that volunteer at my work. "linux will take over" "Linux is better" "Windows is too expensive" " Win8 is dumb". Seriously, it is little wonder why I have a job and they are job hunting.
Win8 have some issues? absolutely! Are they critical design flaws? generally no.
The OS is tight, efficient, works equally well on gutless mobile platforms as it does on beefy multi-screen monsters (provided you have 2GB of ram), and when you have a touch screen or some form of gesture support via a newer style mouse/touchpad, or a device like leapmotion or kinnect it becomes amazingly obvious that this OS is actually very good at supporting an extremely wide variety of input sources (wish that voice commands were better though). And what's more is that I do not feel gimped at all when using a traditional keyboard and mouse with the one exception of the rt. click context menu coming up from the bottom of the screen instead of a traditional context menu, everything else is a good experience with mouse and keys.
At any rate, the point is that you need to learn not only windows8, but also OSX, iOS, WP7/8, Android, and a few Linux distros if you want to get a job these days. There are simply too many devices, and to be honest the days of a sysadmin having any say at all in what hardware is used are entirely gone. Learn it, learn to love the finer points of all, and find tools to help with the failings of every OS.
All that said, the big update screwed up 2 of the 6 machines that I have been testing win8 on. The laptops were fine, wife's PC was fine, and my test bench rig was fine. But my big i7 rig has some issues now, as does the example PC I have at work. I think it is a simply driver issue, but I have not had time to really get into it yet. Like I said, win8 is pretty good... but not without some issues.