Why Windows 7?
Matt posted in The Industry on July 6th, 2009
No, this post isn’t about why Windows 7 is good or bad. It’s about why it is called Windows 7. According to Microsoft, it’s called Windows 7 because it’s the 7th release of Windows. For no apparent reason, I started wondering how they are coming up with the 7th release of Windows. The last numbered regular Windows edition was Windows 3.1. Since, there’s been Windows 95 (4), Windows 98 (5), Windows ME (6), Windows 2000 (7 - this was way better than WinME, but it actually came out first. Go figure.), Windows XP (8), Windows Vista (9). Windows 2K could be omitted since it was targeted at the NT crowd, but it’s still not getting to the number 7. My next thought was perhaps they were using NT numbering. The last numbered version of NT was NT 4. Since then, there’s been Windows 2000 (5), Windows XP (6), and Windows Vista (7). So, that’s not it. A friend thought that perhaps it was the kernel version. Turns out Windows 7 is using version 6.1 of the NT kernel. So why is it called 7? If anyone is privy to the official Microsoft numbering, feel free to leave a comment. Otherwise, I’ll remain confused.
July 6th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
It’s because NT 3.1’s version was synchronized to the current version of Windows — then 3.1.
So we have (in the NT series):
Windows 1 == Windows NT 3.1
Windows 2 == Windows NT 3.5
Windows 3 == Windows NT 4
Windows 4 == Windows 2000
Windows 5 == Windows XP
Windows 6 == Windows Vista
Windows 7 == Windows 7
July 6th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Its because they are counting good versions of windows, consumers don’t care about kernel versions or all versions just good versions. Thus:
Windows 3 = 3
Windows 95 = 4
Windows 98 = 5
Windows 2000/xp = 6
Windows vista/7 = 7
Windows 7 is what they hoped 7 would be in the first place, thus the name.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Windows NT = 4
Windows XP = 5
Windows Vista = 6
Windows 7 = 7
The server versions of Windows probably don’t matter to the consumers of Win7. And besides, a server version is usually launched alongside a non-server version, and share a great part of the NT kernel.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
They should add DOS versions in there too–
1-6 == MSDOS
7 = Windows 95 (actually reported it as DOS 7.0 for a while)
8 = Windows 98
9 = Windows ME
10 = Windows NT 3.1
11 = Windows NT 3.5
12 = Windows NT 4.0
13 = Windows 2000
14 = Windows XP/2003
15 = Windows Vista/2008
16 = Windows 7
So really, it should be Windows 16.
December 4th, 2009 at 11:27 am
hey Matt
listen man, i know that this isn’t related to the article, but iam a freshmen student in college and i really want to pursue a career in game programming, so please contact me through my email: generalsnake@gmail.com
so i can talk to you more about this thing, i really need some guidance here
Thank you very much