well.. got the phone to do the pre update. then there was apparently ANOTHER LARGE pre up date. it trie dit, downloaded it then failed to open the file. I tried it again and it did open it. took 3 hours to download and install . then it grabbed the actual 8.1 update, again. long downlaod, multiple reboots and install time and eventually by about 8am this morning it was ready to use after a quick walk thru and 'fast setup' by 8.1 when it fianlly came up the first time.
Sounds like nokia and win re-tooled the update to 8.1 and broke it in smaller pieces that got applied one at a time vs a big jump from 8.0 to 8.1 which was evidentally causing some failures.