Windows 7 To Be Called ... Windows 7 772
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."
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know they sucked and hardly anyone used them, but that kind of overlooks Windows v1 & v2. I think it makes more sense if you go with the major steps of the UI:
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:1, Interesting)
You forgot Windows 2000 ...
Windows started at version 3...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't think so. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sforhbLiwLA [youtube.com]
Too obsessive (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
7 of 9? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Isn't Seven lucky in China (Score:2, Interesting)
For give me if I don't know my chinese numerology but I've heard that 7 is a lucky number in china and people like to see multiple repetitions of the number.
The word "Windows" is seven letters long so that makes it 77.
As stupid as that sounds, I'm sure MS is looking to China as a much easier place to grow than battling for marginal market share in the saturated western market.
It should actually be called Windows 21 (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows ME actually removed the underlying DOS and replaced it with an emulator. Unfortunately, a lot of things still expected actual DOS, and so broke under ME. Back then, when things crashed, it took the whole system down with it.
A friend of mine put the DOS binaries back into ME, and it ran quite well afterwards.
Re:(blinks) (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but your post needs correcting. Are you in marketing by chance?
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.
Developers don't sell software, they write it. They create it. It doesn't exist before they cause its existance. They actually PRODUCE. They create the actual wealth, rather than capitalizing on it and exploiting it like the marketers and executives do.
The Golgafrinchan third arkers from marketing sell the software that the developers WRITE.
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows is actually TWO families of programs, and each family follows a divergent path:
Family 1 (MS-DOS based shells)
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
DEAD (no longer updated by Microsoft)
Family 2:
IBM/microsoft OS/2 1.0 (joint venture)
IBM/microsoft OS/2 2.0 (joint)
IBM/microsoft OS/2 3.0 (never-released prototype)
Windows NT 3.1 (the program that resulted after microsoft split from IBM)
Windows NT 4.0 (1996)
Windows NT 5.0 (Windows 2000)
Windows NT 5.1 (XP in 2001)
Windows NT 6.0 (Vista in 2006)
Windows NT 7.0 (Windows 7)
I hope that clears things up, and it makes sense when viewed in that manner. Windows 7 is a logical progression of programs over the last ~25 years.
Windows Se7en (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Seven Deadly Sins! (Score:2, Interesting)
so, like, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:(blinks) (Score:3, Interesting)
MS wants a clear break from Vista. Vista is such a flop, that calling the new version anything related to Vista is bad. Thus, MS Pinnacle might be bad. So might MS View. So might Vista II. Although the V-2 might be appropriate for all the wreckage it has caused. [Stretching the analogy here....]
When your product shits the bed as bad as Vista, you 'go back to basics'. And that's what Windows 7 harkens back to. It's simple, it's basic, it comes from a time when things just worked.
Ford Model T
VW Type 1 (aka beetle or bug)
Windows 7
Car makers didn't need fancy names when things just worked. It's only when cars started getting bloated that they needed fancy names like
Ford Explorer (which, AFAICT, is only used to explore the sales at the mall)
Dodge Grand Caravan (same)
Mercury Marquis
Re:Isn't Seven lucky in China: No (Score:1, Interesting)
It's actually in western countries that 7 is lucky.
I think it was Leibniz (the inventor of the binary number system) who started that.To him, 111 (binary representation of 7) represented the holy trinity
Re:Western Civ 100 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I'm gonna have to go ahead here, and disagree with you on this one. See, the first years of colonization were fraught with native/colonist battles, skirmishes, and bitterness. From the beginning onwards, it really gave colonists this sense that they were truly "better" than these barbaric and uncouth natives. As time progressed, and colonies began to turn into nations (I'm going to stick with America here mostly), this notion of superiority transformed into one of the biggest driving factors in recent history; the idea of American Exceptionalism.
Americans, from the beginning, felt they were exceptional for many reasons; overthrowing the king, bringing democracy to the land, being enlightened, what have you. However, I would contend that one of the biggest factors contributing to this mindset came during the period of American westward expansion. As America pushed into the frontier, they felt they were spreading civilization across the land - land that was formerly native. They felt they had a duty to the world, to spread this civilization.
So they did. This is where Manifest Destiny came from - Americans are the biggest, baddest, and most enlightened people in town, and we're enlightening you too (whether you like it or not). Would America have grown to the size it is today without this ideal? Probably not. The Mexican-American war was started largely because of manifest destiny (James Polk ran on a platform of American expansion), and that's where nearly 1/4 our (continental) geographical size came from. However, geography isn't the big deal with American Exceptionalism; it's all about foreign policy.
From the 1890s onward, America was openly expansionist; the Philippines were more or less ours, Hawaii was up for grabs, etc. However, American Exceptionalism was about spreading culture, not land. So damn near every chance America got, we exerted our influence (Roosevelt w/ "speak softly and carry a big stick", Wilson/WW1/League of Nations, Truman/UN). Even today, I would argue that our entire foreign policy is driven, at some points openly, and other points subtly, by the ideal of American Exceptionalism.
A perfect example, I feel, is Iraq. We weren't invading Iraq for oil; we were invading for two reasons (according to our President, mind you). First and foremost, to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, and his very terrible weapons of mass destruction. Second, to bring democracy to the Iraqis. Now, doesn't that sound an awful lot like the great, civilized, exceptional Americans making the "barbaric" parts of the world just like us?
So to just brush aside the natives as a non-event is silly. They were the evidence that American Exceptionalism was "right"; if they could be civilized, so could the rest of the world. They were not the origin of American Exceptionalism, but they did a hell of a lot to justify that ideal, and the effects of that justification can be felt very clearly today.
Note: I'm trying my best to be objective. Whether I feel America is exceptional or not, the fact of the matter, is that America felt it was exceptional, and has for 200 years.
Re:Isn't There an Iron Maiden Song For This? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>>No, No, No. NT did not derive from OS/2.
>
Thanks for the correction. I revise my list like so:
Family 2:
Intel i860 prototype OS (never released)
Windows NT 3.1 (actually 1.0 but named 3.1 for marketing reasons)
Windows NT 4.0 (1996)
Windows NT 5.0 (Windows 2000)
Windows NT 5.1 (XP in 2001)
Windows NT 6.0 (Vista in 2006)
Windows NT 6.1? (Windows 7)
Family 1 (MS-DOS based shells)
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98/ME
DEAD (no longer updated by Microsoft)