Debate: Should Windows 10 be Called Windows 8.2?

It’s been a while since Microsoft released it’s Technical Preview for Windows 10 and a lot of people had an opportunity to test it. Of course, there are positive and negative reviews, but one question arises, is Windows 10 really worth to be called the brand new operating system, or is it just an improved version of Windows 8?

Before we start our debate, I have to say that this is just a Technical Preview of the new operating system, so many new features are excluded from it, but we can make an analysis based on what we got so far.

After testing Windows 10, most users were satisfied with it, way more than they were with Windows 8 (Just as a reminder, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined had a minor operating system market share of just 16.8%, which is unacceptable for Microsoft). The main reason for positive reviews is that people got what they requested, the Start Menu. This is also the main feature of Windows 10 Technical Preview, and the main change, besides some other interface tweaks, all other stuff are almost the same as they were in Windows 8 or 8.1. So an average user could tell, why this is presented as a brand new operating system, when there’s only one crucial change? Because of that, a lot of people call it Windows 8.2.

In my opinion answer for that question lays in the name of Windows 10. When Microsoft skipped one number and presented the new operating system to go by the name of Windows 10 they explained that they’re not “building and incremental product,” but people understood it as a way for Microsoft to distant from Windows 8 as much as possible. Because of that, people expected wonders from Windows 10 and expected it to be drastically different from Windows 8. But if we take a look at history of Windows OS, neither version of Windows is drastically different than its predecessor. Here’s a proof I found on Microsoft forum:

• Windows NT 4.0 (along the same time as Windows 95)
• Windows 2000 was just NT 5.0
• Windows XP was just NT 5.1
• Windows Vista was 6.0 and was a major change, mostly to take advantage of new hardware for things like graphics acceleration that were never possible before.
• Windows 7 was just 6.1 and really just changed some taskbar behaviors.
• Windows 8 was 6.2 and although it looked different, the big change was just a bigger (full-screen) start menu. Although it was big, it had the same function (shortcuts and an ‘all programs’ directory).
• Windows 8.1 was 6.3 and added some mouse functions and title bars
• Windows 10 is just going to be 6.4.

So the impression is that people really expect too much from just a Technical Preview of the new Windows. But there’s another interesting inference from this. It looks like people didn’t disliked Windows 8 as much as they disliked its certain features. And now when we have Windows 8 look-a-like operating system with improved features (read: Start Menu), people are pretty much satisfied with it and experts are predicting that Windows 10 will do much better job than Windows 8 did.

Also, as I said at the beginning of the article, this is just a Technical Preview, and a lot of features, along with Microsoft’s much anticipated voice assistant Cortana, need to be included in the final version, so I think that we should wait until the final release to make comparisons.

Read Also: How to Downgrade From Windows 10 to Windows 8.1