We're less than three weeks away from the general availability of Windows 8, and Microsoft is preparing for the launch with a set of patches it says will improve the operating system's performance, battery life, and compatibility with applications and drivers. The Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 General Availability Cumulative Update is available today via Windows Update for MSDN and volume license users who are already running Windows 8 on their devices.

Microsoft's blog post about the updates noted that, in past versions of Windows, these sorts of improvements were generally distributed only to particular OEMs at first. The company would then release to the rest of the user base as part of a Windows service pack later on. Because of improvements to Microsoft's testing processes, updates that bring Service Pack-level improvements to the operating system should now make their way out to more people more quickly.

Though the company didn't comment on how these improvements would affect future Windows updates, they do pave the way for larger patches and fixes to be delivered to the OS independently of big service packs. This may soothe corporate IT managers who still feel the need to wait for a service pack before considering a new Windows version. These kinds of incremental updates will also be especially important in tablets, where Windows 8 will be competing against iOS, Android, and other operating systems that iterate and introduce new features more rapidly. Hopefully, this will help keep Windows 8 feeling fresh for the duration of its planned three-year lifecycle.