There's lots to like about the new Windows 8 system, for sure, but there's also a lot of hutning and questing that's required as you get up to speed with all the changes that are in place. You can set up auto-update for Windows itself -- which I'll show in a different tutorial -- but having individual apps updated automatically, weather, sports, news, etc, is far easier than it's ever been but you have to find it to accomplish the task!

Turns out that, rather logically, the feature is stuck in the Windows App Store module (just as the similar capability is tied into the Mac App Store on a Mac OS X system). So where is that app and how do you find it?

Turns out that the "Store" is one of the buttons on the Start screen and it even shows you, oh so subtly, whether you have any updates pending.

On my system, I had 15 pending updates when I tested this feature out. How do I know? Look:

It's ridiculously subtle, but the lower right of the Store area -- with the shopping bag icon -- has a tiny '15' displayed. If I had no updates, there'd be no number displayed there, so the fact that there is a number at all denotes that there are updates to deal with.

To do so, simply click on the Store button to jump in...

Gorgeous, visually arresting design, but the link to click on is so ridiculously tiny that it's almost impossible to see on this screen. It's on the top right, in light green, and says "Updates (15)".

Click on that link and you'll see what needs updates:

Now it makes more sense and you can see that a lot of the system apps are ready for an update. Early days of a very new operating system and all that, right?

I can select or unselect individual apps by right-clicking on them, or I can update everything at once by looking on the lower left at the options:

"Select all" and "Install" are a good pair. Make sure everything you want to update is selected, then click on "Install" to download and install the updates.

Now you'll see something like this:

As each update is downloaded and installed their status will change, until *poof* it vanishes from the update apps list. When this screen is blank, you're done.

Got it? :-)