Recently Microsoft has released an update (KB2671501) that extends the evaluation version would be alive through January 15, 2013. The update is available for both Windows 8 Developer Preview and Windows 8 Server Developer Preview.

In September of last year, Microsoft officially previewed Windows 8 and offered developers a chance to evaluate and the new Windows platform for a limited time. And the expiration dates were set to March 11, 2012 and April 8, 2012 for Windows 8 Developer Preview and Windows 8 Server Developer Preview respectively.

To get this update, Run Windows Update from Control Panel, and then click Check for Updates. After you install this update, Windows automatically tries to reactivate after the restart until activation is successful.

Important: You must install this update to postpone the expiration otherwise the evaluation period will remain as earlier. And you can check the expiration date, by running winver or winver.exe from Start Search, Run Dialog Box or Command Prompt.

While a week ago, Microsoft also announced that Windows 8 Consumer Preview will be released in upcoming Mobile World Congress event to be held in Barcelona, Spain. So I’m sure we don’t need to worry because we will have a new toy to play with.