Windows 7 To Be Called ... Windows 7

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft's Mike Nash came forward today in a blog post on the Windows Vista Blog and revealed the official name for Windows Code Name '7' as simply 'Windows 7.' The reasoning, by Mr. Nash, is that Windows 7 is 'the seventh release of Windows.' As much wonderful sense as this makes on first glance, it seems as if Microsoft's marketing teams pulled this number out of thin air: the Windows 7 kernel is version 6.1, and there's no way Windows 7 adds up as the seventh release of Windows anyway."

Comments

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[MightyYar]

I dunno, it works out if you do consumer OSs:
Win 3
Win 95
Win 98
Win ME
Win XP
Vista
Win 7

(blinks)

[ErikZ]

Does...anyone really care? It's just a name.

Frigging *pick* one and get back to work.

Re:(blinks)

[dword]

Finding the proper name is work, for the marketing department. Unfortunately, you're probably a software developer and name your applications "vi" or "fsck" because you don't bother that much to improve your image. You sell software, the company sells a product. Software needs good lines of code, the product needs a good name and wrapping.

Also, "Windows 7" may have a small impact on geeks but let's not forget MS's target is Average Joe to whom it may sound nicer than "Longhorn" or "Fiesty" which also don't mean much to me. What the hell are Fiesty and Gusty and which one is better? What's the difference between them? Now look at it like this: We have Windows 7, there were 6 other versions before it and that alone makes it "better", which means it's cool! I know this isn't true but it's the way Joe thinks and it's what MS is trying to sell.

MS is choosing a name for their product and people complain that there are more important things? It depends what your job is, but software developers should actually take a few moments and think about this and try to avoid naming their applications like cat, fsck, vi, nice, apt, sudo, etc. You have to admit, "type" is more intuitive than "cat."

In other words: Application names are a lot more important than you might think.

Kinda makes sense...

[thompson.ash]

I think M$ saw the whole 666 thing coming.

I don't blame them for picking them a different name!

And quite frankly they can call it whatever they like - no one is going to trust it straight up after the fiasco of Vista.

You can call it Microsoft Windows Affordable-Beautiful-And-Absolutely-Fucking-Bombproof. Noone will buy it!

kernel version vs marketing version

[krischik]

Nothing new here really, marketing always start to exaggerate the version number when no mayor changes happen any more.

OS/2 Warp 3 had kernel version 2.3
OS/2 Warp 4 had kernel version 2.4

And 2.x they where (the planned 3.x was supposed to feature what today is called a hypervisor).

Solaris won't mention the mayor version for ages - still stuck at 2.x as nothing fundamental new happen any more.

Only new to windows is the adding factor: 6 + 1 = 7. So my guess is that Windows 8 will be kernel version 6.2 ;-)

It's just release date phobia

[gravyface]

If they tacked on a year to the product name, they'd be bound to that date and would never hear the end of it when it's late.

Code versions

[91degrees]

So he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Up to Windows 3, the version and the name correlated.

95 was version 4. So was 98 (4.1) and ME (4.9).

XP was version 5. Vista was version 7. Each substantialy different from their predecessor.

Presumably Microsoft has some internal policy of when they have a new version

The workstation/server versions started their numbering at 3 for various reasons that make sense to MS marketing. NT3.5 = version 3, NT4 = version 4, Windows 2000 = version 5. At this point the consumer and server versions merged.

MS may well be on version 6.1 of their code. It may have evolved into version 7 by the time it's released. This is similar to the Linux kernel releases being extremely similar to the development versions that precede them.

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[MightyYar]

What wiki? So you are saying that it goes:
Win 1
Win 2
Win 3
Win 4 (95, 98, ME)
Win 5 (NT 3, NT 4, 2000, XP)
Win 6 (Vista)
Win 7

That's plausible except for grouping the entire history of NT up until Vista as one big version. Then again, it also fits into what I was saying if they only count consumer OSs and XP is the only version of NT that "counts" prior to Vista.

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[deniable]

Not quite. You could still 'Exit from Windows' to DOS in early versions of 95. The only reason DOS 7 and Windows 4 got melded together as Win95 was to cut DR-DOS out of the market. It wasn't until Windows ME that the underlying MS-DOS was really hidden.

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[compro01]

Since when did 95, 98, and ME use the NT kernel?

Re:Isn't Seven lucky in China

[jweller]

The problem with China though is the rampant piracy.
They were selling Vista disk for a few dollars before it was even released.

So they were selling it for what it is worth. Sounds fair to me.

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[RAMMS EIN]

``MS set the entire computer industry back by at least half a decade by pawning that trash off on the consumer market.''

That is to say, the users set the world back because they massively went with Windows 95. They could have chosen something else...say, OS/2, SLS, or Slackware, all of which were available at the time.

Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This?

[MightyYar]

Well, some of us live in a Country that just celebrated "Columbus Day" when Christopher Columbus "discovered" America.

Never mind that there were people living here already.

If we can have the cognitive dissonance to celebrate this day, then we can certainly ignore Windows versions prior to 3.11. :)

Re:Isn't Seven lucky in China

[lysergic.acid]

um, that's not how software sales work. it costs a lot of money to develop new software, but not to make copies of it. as sales volume increases, unit costs shrink to zero. and someone downloading a copy of Windows off of the internet (or buying a pirated disk) doesn't cost Microsoft anything. it's not like each time a pirate duplicates the 1's and 0's that Windows consists of, Microsoft suddenly loses money or has their operational costs increased.

and selling the OS for $66 in a different market doesn't affect the U.S. market in any way. they're not selling the product at a loss; they're still making money on each sale. so who are you subsidizing? if you feel the need to give Microsoft your money, that's your choice. that doesn't mean other people have to do the same. Chinese consumers refused to buy the OS at Microsoft's initial price point. so Microsoft was forced to lower the price to get people to buy their product. this happens with every market and has nothing to do with piracy.

if you think Microsoft is charging you too much for their OS, then maybe you shouldn't have bought it. don't bitch about Chinese consumers holding out for a better deal just because you're stupid with your own money.

Western Civ 100

[jmorris42]

> Well, some of us live in a Country that just celebrated "Columbus Day" when Christopher Columbus "discovered" America.

Well allow me to help fill in the gaps your education apparently left. You see, once upon a time we were all part of something called Western Civilization.

History, as it was taught and once generally thought of in the lands of the West, was the story of a great Civilization coming up from the muck to finally stand upon the threshold of space. It is a great story, full of mighty deeds, terrible mistakes, great men and the most horrible villians. It is the story of the rise of science and reason and of the religious and philosophical ideas that made science and learning seem worthy things. It is the story of the rise of capitalism and the madness of the failed experiment of fascism and communism since both spring from the Western tradition. It is the story of the birth of ideas such as individual liberty whose logical consequences lead to the West ending slavery, the rule of law instead of the whim of kings which has allowed us to govern ourselves in peace and prosperity.

Now we face our greatest challenge. Will we throw off the rot within which seeks to destroy our civilization; and thus regaining the confidence of old prove worthy to take our place in space or will our civilization fade away in a fog of post modern doubt. We get to live in most interesting times. We get to see one of the greatest struggles of all time play out. Real history is more exciting than even JRR Tolkien's fiction if ya know how to approach it.

From the perspective of Western Civ, Columbus indeed 'discovered' America in that he introduced the 'New World' into the story. That there were primitives already here didn't really matter in the bigger story. And they didn't, they are little more than local color in any serious history. Their culture was so far below the Europeans they simply ddin't stand a chance. Not passing judgement here, not saying whether it was 'right' or 'wrong', just that it is what happened. Now by modern (and especially post modern...) notions of morality what happened was wrong. But remember that ideas of right and wrong have been evolving almost as fast as science and tech and it is just as important to view the past through the lens of the morals of the day as it is to take into account their lack of modern tech.

Re:Isn't Seven lucky in China

[plague3106]

It is the cultural norm is why.

Ahh.. so murder would be ok if it became acceptable to a large enough population?

There was a paper showing that piracy helped windows get a massive edge over alternatives in China, e.g. if it wasn't free they would NOT use it.

Interesting, but useless. Without a control group (which requires a version of Windows impossible to pirate), the paper doesn't prove anything. Windows became popular in the US without the need for massive piracy; China is no different.

Also it is not theft it is copyright infringemnt, there is a big differnce.

Semantics. You're taken someone's time and investment and not compensated them for it, when they clearly expectd compensation.

It is like advertizing when someone pirates windows, at zero cost.

Just a rationalization of theft. Stealing Gap jeans "advertises" them as well. The cost for MS though is the pay of it's employees and research. Or do you think each version of Windows magically appears at MS, ready for them to sell?

And yes linux is that good but quality doesn't matter much, it is all image. The average user does not try many OSes and decide which is best.

So it's ok to steal because you're lazy. Got ya.