Thanks Dragon-Fur, how we live and learn. Windows offer more, but don't know or care whether the customers can actually receive their gifts. And if it's fine on 8 for those of us stuck with it permanently, 8.1 clearly can't be that much better.
My drivers failed on two programs, Prism video converter (updated but doesn't recognise the update when I run the test again) and my MS Word reader which is apparently out of date but can't be upgraded anyway. But now it seems even if I downloaded a magic patch from the 4 1/2th dimension where they are being given away nothing at all could allow my PC to accept 8.1. But at least I now know why, and surprised these upgrades help so few people relatively but are still rolled out as if a revolution.
I'll soldier on, and see if I can delete the offer from Windows Store where it's sat for months.
