Nothing in this world is simple. At first glance the claim by Mike Nash, VP of Windows at Microsoft, seems straight forward:
“Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore ‘Windows 7’ just makes sense.”
It does except for the fact that I’ve owned in some shape or form:
Windows 1
Windows 2
Windows 2.11
Windows 3
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
and that’s ignoring the 286/386/SE/64 bit/SP#/OSR# versions in addition to the server OS versions.
Of course what he’s referring to is the major part of the internal version number for Windows, the one you get when you type “ver” at a command prompt. For Windows 2000 this was 5 and for Vista was 6. Some people call this the windows kernel version.
Ultimately I like Microsoft going back to a version number or year scheme. I think ultimately this is simpler but I think the year scheme would better serve them. Now will start the arguments what Windows 7 is not a major upgrade and should really be 6.1. Like when Windows 2000 was version 5 and WinXP was 5.1.
Let the flame wars begin!
The most reasonable theory I’ve heard so far is that they are counting the NT releases and they forgot that NT 3.51 existed.
— Bryan Mau Oct 14, 04:51 PM #
I guess I was wrong. He really was counting from Windows 1. Wow. That is some tortured logic to get to 7…
— Bryan Mau Oct 15, 08:01 PM #