Microsoft will officially unveil the new Windows 8.1 operating system on October 18, hoping to see sales of its modern platform going up once again.

It turns out, however, that Microsoft's Windows 8.1 launch party isn't quite an exciting event for many users, as lots of people are already running the operating system.

Basically, the leaked builds that reached the web in late August and early September have provided users with a fully-working build of Windows 8.1 which not only that comes with most of the features to be unveiled on October 18, but also supports activation with a legitimate Windows 8 key.

As a result, many of the goodies to be unveiled later this month are already available to lots of users, but Microsoft is still expected to introduce a few new features that aren't yet available in leaked or MSDN builds.

The company has promised to release a new set of updates just ahead of the RTM launch, thus trying to deliver more improvements and performance optimizations before the operating system reaches users.