[Sparticus]

Much angst about nothing, here. This Windows 8.1 Update is just marketing speak for the first service pack for 8.1. Microsoft must have thought that “Windows 8.1 Service Pack 1” sounded weird.

As far as not updating the 8.1 further, realize that Microsoft did exactly the same thing for XP. A while after Service Pack 1 for XP came out, they quit patching the base XP and all the new patches were targeted at SP1. Same for XP SP2 and XP SP3 as time went by.

[Utilizer]

True. MS is basically trying to gloss over the fact that so much of the base code for 8.1 is demanding so many patches that they had to rewrite it, but rather than calling it something like Windows 8.4 or something they decided to call it Windows 8.1 "Update". But the 8.1 Update is not accessible at their main site which is causing some problems.

It is not a COMPLETE rewrite of the base code, but it is substantial enough that you are looking at a whole new install rather than a security patch suite a la XP-SP3.