Microsoft sticks with 'Windows 7' for next OS

Redmond says the code name 'just makes sense' because it's the seventh Windows, but others differ on that version number

October 13, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. announced today that the code name for its next operating system, Windows 7, will be the product's official name.

Mike Nash, vice president of Windows product management, said the company was sticking with the label for simplicity's sake. "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore 'Windows 7' just makes sense," Nash wrote in Microsoft's Vista blog on Monday.

After noting that Microsoft has at times stuck a date on the OS -- Windows 2000 was the last -- Nash said that didn't make sense this time. "We do not ship new versions of Windows every year," Nash said. "Likewise, coming up with an all-new 'aspirational' name [like Windows XP] does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve, which is to stay firmly rooted in our aspirations for Windows Vista, while evolving and refining the substantial investments in platform technology in Vista into the next generation of Windows."

Some Windows watchers, however, questioned Nash's claim that Windows 7 would be the seventh iteration of the OS. The AeroXperience blog counted seven as of Windows Vista, and eight if the consumer-oriented Windows Millennium was included. However, only if kernel revisions are tallied, XP wasn't counted -- and Windows kernel was incremented to 7.0 for Windows 7 -- would that work, the blog argued.

According to the Windows timeline on Wikipedia, XP's kernel is tagged as 5.1, and Vista's as 6.0.

Microsoft's own version of its client operating system timeline ends with Windows XP, but assumes nine editions as of Vista: Windows 3.0, NT, Windows 95, NT Workstation, Windows 98, Millennium, Windows 2000, XP and Vista. By that timeline, Microsoft doesn't regard Windows 1.0, which it released in 1985, or Windows 2.0, launched in 1987, as "true" Windows.

More than two weeks ago, Microsoft had said it would issue an alpha version of Windows 7 to attendees of its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), which open Oct. 27 and Nov. 5, respectively. Today, Nash called that preview a "pre-beta developer-only release."

It's unusual for Microsoft to use an operating system code name as the official product moniker, and Nash ackowledged that fact. "I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows," he said.

Operating system code names at Microsoft have ranged from "Chicago," which was the under-development name for what became Windows 95 and "Memphis" (Windows 98), to "Whistler" (Windows XP) and "Longhorn" (Windows Vista).

Microsoft has not pinned a ship date to Windows 7, but it has said it was shooting for three years after the release of Vista, which would mean it would be released late in 2009 or early in 2010.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Windows blogger Ed Bott wondered just last week whether Microsoft would keep the "7" tag for its next OS. Nearly half his readers who responded to an online poll gave the nod to "None of the above," but 20% voted for Windows 2010, 14% for Windows 2009 and 7% for Windows Vista R2.

Windows 7 received 15% of the votes in the poll.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9117098

Wow they're already announcing a new OS when poeple still haven't swallowed Vista yet?

They're trying to get back to the 3 year cycle. Vista was pushed back so many times, and clearly it hasn't had the success they were hoping for. By introducing the 3 year cycle again, it'll force people to at least upgrade to Vista, maybe even "Windows 7" when they get a new computer.

However, that doesn't mean a thing really. They need to fix a lot of the problems Windows has, they need to remove a lot of the bloat, and just make a simple operating system, with an easy to learn user interface that has features people WANT. Perhaps even adding customization so they can actviate/de-activate features they want.

I have no intentions of ever going back to Windows. Linux is where I will stay. The sheer fact that I 100% support Linux is what a lot of people should be doing to start getting games ported for Linux, instead of being stuck using Cedega/Wine.

Win XP ftw. I'm not a PC gamer so I don't care about ram limits, DX limits...

Vista has a bad reputation and a very poor adoption rate.  People who have never seen it would rather have XP, just because of negative press.  Better to move on and leave the Vista name in the past.

Maybe they can actually make 7.0 an improvement over 6.0 and 5.1 this time...Using Vista is strange because it shows Windows is actually in regression from 2002 when XP started. From the way they are hyping Windows 7 though, listing all these new features, I'm starting to think it's going to be another long ride on the bloatware express.

They should make only 2 versions of Windows. The first should be the Vista+even more crap bloatware extravaganza, and the second one should be a OS pared down from even XP that uses no more then a few hundred MBs of RAM, runs everything cleanly and has NONE of those features like confirming I want to open a program, superfetch with the endless hard drive thrashing, page files that reduce 4GBs of RAM into 2GBs available and all the rest. Is it too much to ask a version of Windows to run small and clean like OSX and many builds of Linux have been able to do for nearly a decade now?

...it probably is too much to ask until they lose some more market share for another crap OS and finally realize that the UNIX lightweight OS express is the way to go.

   If you want proof the Vista Bloatware express goes nowhere, OSX is only about 7 or 8 percent behind Vista in market share.  Another Vista and Windows will be looking at 3rd place behind OSX and Linux.

Yes! This!

How easy is the move from Windows to Linux though, guys? I wouldn't mind moving.

hmmm.... Microsoft quickly ditching a format that millions of people have just bought in favour of a new one, just because they are unwilling to take effort to fix it.

Doesn't that sound awfully familiar in gaming industry. ;)

Window 7 vs Mac OS10... oooh, how many "10 is greater than 7" jokes will we hear from "I'm a Mac" commercial?

    Your best bet is to make a dual boot system IMO.  What you do is make a second partition for Linux and give it 40 GBs or so (whatever you can spare, might be less if you have a notebook, might as well just use a separate hard drive if you have a desktop).  There are several versions of Linux to choose, I would recommend doing a search and looking at the GUIs and deciding which one you like best.  I like Ubuntu personally.  The video below shows a demo of it

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It looks a lot like OSX so I'm a little biased towards that appearance, but it is also VERY easy to use and far more advanced then Vista in terms of multiple desktops and the like (OSX has something similar called spaces which lets you use 4 separate desktops).  

  You said you don't game much, which is good, Linux sucks far worse then even OSX for gaming (at least OSX can play major releases like COD4 and Spore, Linux gets almost nothing).  It DOES work very well for web browsing, using open office for word processing and all the things you would do for the Vista Office (except Open office is way faster and doesn't crash nearly as often as Office 2007, going back to the bloatware thing).  Outside gaming Ubuntu blows Vista away in just about every possible way.  Things like loading programs, saving documents and all the rest are noticably faster with the far more lightweight Linux distributions.

   I would recommend partitioning still though, just in case you want to use a game that requires Windows.  I have a hard drive with Windows on it in my Mac Pro for that purpose though I REALLY try to get games I want to play on OSX; I hate using Windows Vista with a passion.