[Blind-sysadmins] Updating windows8 to 8.1 update1

Hello, This is probably an easy one to some, but I'm new to win8. I got a copy of it about a year or so ago got it in a vm, and then my VMware busted. Well, long story short got it fixed, and am now back with 8 learning, and I've been told that 8.1 is a major improvement over 8, is this so? Secondly, update1 is almost a must have. I'd like to get both of these, they're not coming through windows update. My screen reader if it matters is NVDA 2015.1. Thanks. Dave.