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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."
the Windows 7 kernel is version 6.1
Perhaps they simply wanted to avoid the inevitable Windows 6, SP 6, Revision 6 ... of the beast?
My work here is dung.
I will wait for Windows 7.11 for Workgroups
If the version is 7 and the kernel version is 6.1, maybe they should compromise and call it Windows 6.66
Does...anyone really care? It's just a name.
Frigging *pick* one and get back to work.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Maybe Microsoft isn't counting Vista. And Windows 7 sounds way better than Windows Vista Do-Over Edition.
Windows 1.x = 1
Windows 2.x = 2
Windows 3.x = 3
Windows NT 3.5 = um... 3.5?
Windows NT 4 = 4
Windows 2000 = 5
Windows XP = 6
Windows Vista = null
Windows 7 = 7
Ta-da!
1.) November 1985 Windows 1.01
2.) November 1987 Windows 2.03
2.) March 1989 Windows 2.11
3.) May 1990 Windows 3.0
3.) March 1992 Windows 3.1x
3.) October 1992 Windows For Workgroups 3.1
4.) July 1993 Windows NT 3.1 NT 3.1
3.) December 1993 Windows For Workgroups 3.11
3.) January 1994 Windows 3.2 (released in Simplified Chinese only)
4.) September 1994 Windows NT 3.5
4.) May 1995 Windows NT 3.51
5.) August 1995 Windows 95
6.) July 1996 Windows NT 4.0
7.) June 1998 Windows 98
8.) May 1999 Windows 98 SE
9.) February 2000 Windows 2000
10.) September 2000 Windows Me
11.) October 2001 Windows XP
11.) March 2003 Windows XP 64-bit Edition
12.) April 2003 Windows Server 2003
11.) April 2005 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
13.) July 2006 Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs
14.) January 2007 (retail) Windows Vista
15.) July 2007 Windows Home Server
16.) February 2008 Windows Server 2008
17.) 2010 (planned) Windows 7
They're using their grammar skills there.
at least they didn't name it something like "Wii". Gah.
http://www.object404.com
Seven's the number of perfection. Maybe this time they will get it right!
Here I figured "Windows 7" actually made sense. But if the kernel is only 6.1, then never mind. Don't know why I would assume MS would do something that made sense.
95 = 4.0
98 = 4.1
ME = 4.9
2000 = 5.0
XP = 5.1
Vista = 6.0
So I assumed if they're calling it "Windows 7", that this was going to be 7.0. Oh well.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
You are _happy_ with Windows and you ask what's wrong with you? On Slashdot? You must be new here.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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!
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was going blame you for it!
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 ;-)
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.
body massage!
Blatant rip off of Slackware.
"7" will be just a maintainance release for Vista.
The really new Windows version will be called "Ubuntu". It has new "chocolate" artwork and they have switched to a Unix-based core and a modular architecture. It is going to be much more stable, user-friendly and fast.
You can download preview releases at ubuntu.com.
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.
Mike Nash : The OSes all go to seven. Look, right across the board, seven, seven, seven and...
PHB : Oh, I see. And most OSes top off at Vista?
Mike Nash : Exactly.
PHB : Does that mean it's better? Is it any better?
Mike Nash : Well, it's one better, isn't it? It's not Vista. You see, most blokes, you know, will be using Vista. You're on Vista here, all the way up, all your CPUs burning, all the way up, you're on Vista on your PC. Where can you go from there? Where?
PHB : I don't know.
Mike Nash : Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
PHB : Put it up to seven.
Mike Nash : Seven. Exactly. One better.
PHB : Why don't you just make Vista better and make Vista be the top number and make that a little better?
Mike Nash : [pause] These go to seven.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"...and on the seventh day he rested".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Don't think so. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sforhbLiwLA
No sig today...
Apple names their versions after cats and what chases cats?
So Windows CE/Mobile will be called Windows Poodle.
Windows 7 will be Windows Jackal.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I've heard it said that MS needs to win over the geek crowd of early adopters. Maybe this is an attempt to get them with an implied Seven of Nine reference. All it needs now is an ad campaign featuring Jeri Ryan.
That still doesn't beat the .NET framework naming convention.
1.0 -> 1.1, breaking change, run side by side.
2.0 breaking change, change of the compiler (ok, so that makes sense.
3.0, just an extra set of libs for 2.0, no change beyond that (wtf)
3.5, NOT a breaking change over 2.0, but an extremely major version (bigger changes than for all of the previous versions, though non-breaking). Still refered to 2.0 for configuration purposes, like in IIS, as the CLR didn't change.
4.0 (tentative, most likely will run side by side).
It doesn't make any fucking sense.
I know that slashdotters don't like Microsoft, but isn't it a little too obsessive to be criticising them for their version numbering scheme? Isn't that like hating someone because their hair is just the wrong shade of brown or the daiameter of the buttons on their shirt are a millimetre too small?
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
They should try to get Jeri Ryan as a spokes persons and Majel Barrett's permission.
Do a few "sexy" ads. Try to get some geek love back.
And here I thought they'd call it Windows Mojave!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
No, it was because they were already up to Word 5.1 on the Mac - it created a unified numbering scheme.
Rob
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
8 is lucky, that's why Olympics opened on 08.08.08
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines - Unknown
No, in China 8 is the luckiest number. Partly because the word (ba) sounds like that for "prosperity".
It's actually in western countries that 7 is lucky.
Found this amusing critique buried in the comments of TFMSB (the fine MS blogpost):
Win 3.1 (Normal)
Win 3.11WG (Good)
WinNT (bad)
WinNT3.5 (normal)
Win95 (bad)
Win95+Patch (normal)
Win98 (bad)
Win98SE (good)
WinME (pathetic)
Win2000 (bad)
Win2000 SP1 (less bad)
Win2000 SP2 (normal)
Win2000 SP3 (good)
Win2000 SP4 (excellent)
WinXP (bad)
WinXP SP1 (less bad)
WinXP SP2 (normal)
WinXP SP3 (good)
WinVista (bad)
WinVista SP1 (less bad)
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
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.
You're right! I just saw the poster!
The Disk Operating System is not an operating system?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I beta tested (officially) most of the Windows releases except for 3.11 and anything after longhorn. Each major release would often be refereed to by a sequence number and a code name. For instance, 95 was Win 4.0 a.k.a "Chicago". The numbering seems confusing because a lot of you are trying to incorporate NT, which for most of Windows life span was an independent product, and because 95 through ME were only incremental revisions to 95, not new projects in the same way Chicago, Whistler, and Longhorn were.
1 = Win 1.0
2 = Win 2.0
3 = Win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, Some code shared with OS/2
4 = Win 95, Win 95 OS/R 2, Win 98, Win 98 SE, Win ME
5 = Windows XP (Move to the NT kernel.)
6 = Vista
7 = Windows 7
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.
Ahhh! Someone else saw this too! Huzzah! I saw the "sins" as: 3.0- Lust 95- Envy 98/NT-Pride ME- Sloth XP- Greed Vista- Gluttony Win7-Wrath
Here in the west at least most of the customers actually pay.
Nah, we go to MS Tech Launch events and get Vista for free.
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
A lot more important than the name, is what kind of godawful hardware is it going to take to run it?
We already know from the Vista experience that "Windows 7 ready" isn't going to mean anything, and that "minimum requirements" mean "yes, it'll boot". I own five PCs (not including the mac) and not one of them is fast enough to run Vista acceptably, not even my media center. I despair of ever catching up.
Especially during an economic downturn...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Andy
Balloon Help is just about the most annoying feature ever to be introduced to the computing world.
GetVersionEx() returns the Major OS version in numeric form. Currently, the values are as follows:
4 - The operating system is Windows NT 4.0, Windows Me, Windows 98, or Windows 95.
5 - The operating system is Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000.
6 - The operating system is Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.
Thus, Windows 7 will probably return a GetVersionEx() Major Version number of.... 7.
Nearly half of all people are below average
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.