With the introduction of Windows 7, Microsoft started to remove unnecessary noise from the Windows Desktop, meaning the number of system notification balloons that you see on your desktop have been reduced. However, if a user wanted, he could still enable (from Action Center) and receive desktop notification when Windows Updates where available. But this option has disappeared in Windows 8, meaning that no Windows Update messages are shown anymore on the desktop but only on the logon screen.
If you have configured Windows Update to automatically download and install updates then it’s fine, but there are many users, including me, who like to manually check for updates and install them. For those users this is a bad thing. To further dampen things, if you also have automatic logon feature enabled, there’s basically no way to automatically know when updates are available. A solution to this issue is available in the form of a third party tool called Windows (8) Update Notifier.
Windows (8) Update Notifier is a free portable program that automatically checks for Windows 8 updates in the background and informs user with a desktop notification whenever updates are available for their system.
The program runs silently from the system tray without interfering with your work, giving you better control over update notification. Suppose you were watching a movie or giving a presentation then you can simply close this app to not be bothered by the notifications, and re-enable them later. A better way than to close-and-restart would have been a built-in option to temporarily disable notification, but I can live with that until the developer adds such an option.
You might want to auto-start the program with Windows. To do so, press Win + R, type shell:startup and press enter. This will open the startup folder. Now move WindowsUpdateNotifier.exe executable file into the opened folder. That’s it, the program will now automatically start with Windows and keep you constantly informed of new Windows updates.
[Found via Ghacks]