Get yourself some of that 8.1 Cortana action on the 10th (or whenever according to Cody). This is how.

I’ve looked into this so you don’t have to. It’s not hard and very free.  Follow my step by step directions and you’ll be on your way to chatting up the blue Halo lady along with the plethora of other features you’ll be enjoying thanks to my guidance.  Thank me by giving me app suggestions on my last article.  Here we go…

1.  Update yo PC:  You’re going to need Windows 7 SP1 at the very least.  Get it.  Open the start menu.  Type “Update” and select “Windows Update” from the list.  Run it and restart.  move onto step 2.

2.  Get IE11.  Chrome didn’t work for me.  It shatted out on the last step of the process.  Doesn’t matter whether this is a conspiracy.  This isn’t about browser wars.  This is about Microsoft being nice enough to give you a way to freely bypass your carriers and get the latest updates without all kinds of hackery and bricked phones from one wrong step.  Do them the solid of downloading IE11.  Not a bad browser anyway.

3.  Go here and register for an App Studio account.  Just sign in with your Microsoft account and you’re done.  You can goof around with App Studio which is mildly entertaining.  So easy my grandma who never owned a computer could accidently create a windows phone app.  Very cool to fill a need for yourself that no other OS can really do for you.  Keep going.  Almost there.

4. Go here on your phone or on your PC to send it to your phone.  This is the Windows Phone Store listing for the app that hooks you into their update program.  Once it is installed open the app and sign in with your Microsoft account.

5.  Go to your settings on your Windows Phone and check for updates.  If you do it today you should get an incremental update for 8.0 that does… something.  I don’t know.  Probably minor tweaks. Either way, it’s good to have because AT&T wasn’t doing it for me.

If you do all this then you’re done!  Just go for an app update next Thursday and you’ll be blessed by the hand of Microsoft’s generous OS distribution for whatever WP8 device you happen to have.  Pretty awesome.  If you want all this in a list directly from Microsoft then check out this page.