Why Windows 7?5
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.

