Does anyone know whether the upcoming Windows 8.1 will allow an upgrade 'in place' or will it require a re-install of the OS from scratch and re-install of all other programs?

cant give a guarantee.... but all other than an upgrade would make no sense. It will defacto be a replacement of most of the existing windows... but with "benefit" to keep all installed programms. (I even could upgrade my win7 to win8 without reinstalling my programs...)
(and I read for existing win8 owners it will be free too...)

Georg

Thanks.

I hope you are right - just installing Win 8 Pro 64 -bit and really don't want to re-install everything twice in a matter of weeks.

I read in one article that the upgrade of 8.1 is free for those using windows 8 or installed 8.1 preview. If you want to read that article you can found that at
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/blog ... s-8-1.aspx

yes ist free. I did it. my god. what pain in the a...

1. it took hours to download 3.2 GB
2. after mandatory reboot Windows did state that my CPU fan has failed and was refusing to boot further (I did set my fans to spinn 100% during boottime, so Im pretty sure they were not failing....)
3. ok after some extra boots and some +18 rated curses I could convince whoever to boot up my pc
4. followed by 8.1 Installation finalizing routines
5. I was surprised that my INTEL raid Controller Software poped up claiming no raid was found
6. 20min later and Driver updated installed from Intel page I had my Windows back...
7. but not my still missing "Start" button (or better the win7 Content of this button)
8. so classic Shell menu enabled again...
9. oh wow, my IE Icons are gone, nore was IE11 installed, IE10 was uninstalled - of course. I had to start the f.....g browser selection tool to install a Software I already decided to stick with in past (what a masochistic decision, I know...)
10. after Installation I recognized that no menu entry for the IE11 nore any Icon on desktp or anywhere else was installed, so I had to create a shortcut from IE11 entry found with the classic Shell menu entries...
11. now I'm happy I've solved this Mission....what a waste of time...

I did it first day download was available on my Dell T5400 Dual Xeon, 16GB RAM system.

Download took 12 hours with several restarts - 3.5GB over a 1.5-2 Mbps ADSL connection - although it does carry on from where it left off. I guess demand was very high.

After that it was remarkably straighforward in my case, although at one point I recall wondering whether anything was happening for quite a while.

I run Start 8 and Fences from Stardock, and there was an update for Start 8 for 8.1.

All seems to be working well so far.