Microsoft announced that they would start to sell Windows 8 on 26th October. Earlier this month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft promised that they would release Windows 8 in this October.

Steven Sinofsky, Windows department manager, announced this news in Microsoft's yearly sales conference. He mentioned that the next generation Windows operating system would be on sale on the Friday 3 months later. But he didn't mention whether Surface would be released at the same time. In June, Microsoft announced their own tablet Surface which had two versions. One will run the full version of Windows 8, the other will run Windows RT. It may have the possibility that they will also release Surface when they start to sell Windows 8. If it's true, then we can predict that there will be a huge demand on Windows 8 and also the competition between iPad and Surface will be brought to front stage finally.

Current users who are using Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 can download the upgrade package with $40. The price is $70 if you buy the upgrade package in retail store. To be noted that the price above is the promotion price, the promotion will end on 31st December, 2013.

Reference : http://news.csdn.net/a/20120719/2807474.html