In an announcement in a blog post and at the company's annual sales meeting on Wednesday, Microsoft revealed that the much-awaited newest version of its operating system - Windows 8 OS - will go on sale on October 26.

The information about the launch date of Windows 8 OS by Microsoft was released on Wednesday. It was first disclosed by Stephen Sinofsky - president of the Windows and Windows Live unit - at Microsoft's Global eXchange
(MGX), the company's annual internal mass meeting of company executives, product managers, and salespersons.

Later, the same announcement was made in an official blog post by Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc.

According to the Microsoft's announcement, the mentioned date for the availability of Windows 8 OS - which has been designed to work PCs as well as tablet computers - implies that the new software will be released as a downloadable upgrade that day for PC owners.

In addition, as per the blog post by LeBlanc, PC makers will also begin selling new computers equipped with Windows 8 OS on October 26.

So far as the upgrades to the Windows 8 OS is concerned, users of Windows XP, Vista or 7 will have to pay $40, a fee which is considerably lower than what Microsoft has charged for its earlier OS upgrades. However, for people who have purchased a Windows 7 system on June 2 or later will have to pay only $15 for the Windows 8 upgrade!