You must upgrade your Windows 8 to 8.1 within two years

Windows 8.1 will be released on October 18. It's more than a service pack which packs a lot of new features and is based NT version 6.3 which brings in a lot of improvements to the OS. Microsoft has announced that they would cease support to Windows 8 just two years after the release of Windows 8.1 which is October 2015.

Of course if you are a Windows 8 user then you can get the update via the store or download the iso files which will also be released on October 18. End of support is not surprising because Microsoft have done the same with Service packs. When a service pack was released the previous version of the product will be supported up to 2 years. Windows 7 RTM lost support on April 2013 and SP 1 is the only supported version of the OS. Windows 8 adopts the same methodology but it gets updated with new features and not restricted security fixes as Service packs did. Make sure you use the latest Service pack if you are using Windows 7 or older and if you are using Windows 8 then upgrade to Windows 8.1 as soon as possible to avoid problems later.