Microsoft  's new operating system [launched] Thursday, and you may be asking: How did we get to Windows 7? Did I miss 5 and 6?
No, you didn't. But Microsoft Corp.'s names for the successive versions of Windows have been more than a little confusing. It's easy to get the impression that with every new version of Windows, Microsoft wants us to forget that there was a previous one.
Long ago, we had Windows 1, 2 and 3. So far, so good. Then Microsoft started naming its consumer software after the year of release, like a car, and we got Windows 95. That was followed by 98, while professional users got 4.0. But Windows 2000 wasn't for consumers at all -- the professional version was now named for its vintage as well.
The new millennium raised an obstacle to the year-numbering scheme. Microsoft balked at naming its new system "01." Naming it "2001" wouldn't have worked either: imagine all the jokes about the homicidal computer in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." So the new Windows became "XP," a not entirely self-evident contraction of "experience."
There didn't seem to be any other two-letter combination handy to capture Microsoft's goals for the next Windows, so it became "Vista." A vista is what you might see out of a window, so that makes sense, right? Someone thought so.
Vista bombed, prompting Microsoft to make another clean break -- the third one -- and give us Windows 7.
Microsoft's official rationale is that "7" is the seventh version of Windows. It gets there by counting up from Windows NT 4.0, skipping Windows 98 and counting both XP and 2000 as No. 5. Vista was No. 6.
Adding to the confusion, Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's president of Windows, has a variant explanation, saying that Windows 95 was the fourth version of Windows. But Windows 7 is descended from NT 4.0, not Windows 95.
And to further complicate matters, Windows 7 is really Windows 6.1. That's what the operating system will tell software applications that are trying to check which version of Windows they are running on. Windows 7 will say it's 6.1 because it's really a small upgrade from Vista, and programs designed to run on Vista should run with no problems on 7.
"The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity," according to Mike Nash at the official Windows blog. He then lays it out in terms as clear as the vista from a newly polished window. (continued...)
© 2009 Associated Press under contract with YellowBrix. All rights reserved.
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