so

should i bother going to windows 8.1 to get 10 for free, or stick with my broken driver, missing disk, windows 7?

 

8.1 .

 

i still don't understand why they can't be creative anymore and use names that aren't numbers

 

They tried to put the coconut into the lime, and failed.

 

from what i remember they skipped Windows 9 because a lot of software contain a command line like "if OS version begins with Windows 9', then etc" and that would be a problem with Windows 95 and 98

 

First time I've heard about this and totally makes sense, +1

 

the marketing says that Windows 10 is so revolutionary they had to skip 9

 

If I remember correctly Microsoft wants to adjust their OS releases to be more like Apple's; that is, keep the base name (OSX) and release smaller, inexpensive (or even free) updates. Apple does this with names (I think the current one is Snow Leopard? I don't keep up with Mac news much though) which is more appealing to some consumers and I could see Microsoft going that route (sort of like it being Windows Vista rather than Windows 6 or something).

Microsoft is just way too erratic with their nomenclature. For a while they were sticking with giving their OS releases names, sort of like Apple (Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista). Windows 7 onwards just ****ed things all up, because a lot of people assume that Windows 7 is a version number. It's not. Windows 7 is actually Windows NT version 6 or something (I'm sure there's a more detailed version number but I don't know it off the top of my head). Windows 8 made it even more weird because it seemed like they decided "okay, we'll stick with making these version numbers even though technically it's not our internal version number," especially after 8.1. Now it seems they've decided to throw that out the window (hehe) yet again and skip straight to "Windows 10."

Their reasons for skipping 9, I don't know. I don't believe the whole "it's so huge we are skipping straight to 10!!!" for a moment, as nobody really should. Windows 10 doesn't look like it will be a huge departure from W8, imo, but I can understand why they wouldn't want to make it 8.2 just because 8 has such a bad reputation and they want to separate themselves from that. Sense would then demand they just go to Windows 9, but if they intend on making Windows 10 a long-term thing (and do releases like Windows 10.1, Windows 10.2, etc., or name them like Apple does), I can see them wanting to skip to 10 in order to "compete" with OSX. I don't think the average consumer really equates OSX with OS10 but that's my best explanation.

To answer the original question, though, I really like Windows 8 soooooo there's that.