Summary: Microsoft is playing a psychological numbers game to give an illusion of progress whilst in fact just marketing a mythical re-wrapped version of Vista

ACCORDING to Microsoft, Vista 7 is actually "Windows 6.1" (6.0 is Vista) and now it turns out that Vista 8 is "Windows 6.2", as revealed by this article. The reader who alerted us about it asked: "Windows 8 will be only Windows Vista SP4?"

Windows 8 could reportedly sport Windows 6.2 as the version number, according to a third-party source.

Of course, Microsoft has yet to share any details related to the versioning of Windows vNext with the public, but there is a precedent indicating that the version of Windows 8 might end up as 6.x rather than Windows 8.0.

Windows8italia managed to come across a new driver from NVIDIA which apparently references a new Windows kernel, version 6.2, which can only be associated with the next major iteration of Windows.

This information needs to be taken with a grain of salt as there’s no official confirmation from the software giant, an aspect that is bound not to change, at least in the immediate future.

But believe it or not, it’s highly probable to have Windows 6.x as the version for Windows vNext.

Don't believe the hype. Microsoft is just trying to suspend migration to other platforms. Mr. Pogson has just found a Windows Vista prediction from 2006 (when Vista was finalised):

I came across a prediction from 2006 that Vista would have 40% share by 2008. Now, we are in 2010 and Vista +”7″ is still less than 40%. Granted, predicting is an uncertain art because unknown events intervene. What has made this prediction fail?

* Vista was a dog ( I don’t like dogs) * Vista and “7″ will not run on most hardware * Vista and “7″ still welcome malware * The netbook showed many millions of people GNU/Linux in action * Snart-thingies showed millions there are other ways of doing things * Dell and other started selling GNU/Linux to consumers * A recession put a damper on spending

Vista 7 adoption has not really been good, but Microsoft is fudging numbers to make it look differently. ⬆