Saw this guy asked this question up on twitter yesterday: Good question. Instead of replying him with my own answer on twitter, I am writing a post here explaining what the reason behind is. First of all, I should point it out that there was actually another version, Windows 2000, released between Me and XP. The whole series of Windows client Operation System Microsoft released over the time are Windows 3, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, and soon 7. So if we follow the numbers, Windows 7 should really been Windows 10. Well, Microsoft named them not by the official releases but the actual build of OS foundation. If we take look them closely, Windows 95, 98, and ME are built up on the same foundation, and Windows 2000/XP are built on the different but also the same foundation. So really, Windows 95, 98, and Me are a series of Windows 4. And Windows 2000 and XP are actually Windows 5, followed by Windows Vista as Windows 6, and then Windows 7. But wait, it still didn’t apply to Windows 7 because Vista and 7 are actually pretty similar. If we look closely, a lot of things are pretty much the same on both versions. Maybe, Microsoft wanted to have a fresh start that would eventually put the bad Vista way behind. However, it’s just my own version of guess why, but it seems to make pretty good sense to me. 🙂 Here are the collection of Windows Logos way back since version 3.
More likely Microsoft wants to seperate from all previous versions of windows with a fresh start and also would like to take on more of the tone of the mac OS with a simpler number system. They hope seven is their lucky number.
Agree. Frankly, 7 does sound like a more magical number to me than others, for some reason. 🙂
What a load of rubbish.
In the Christian centric world 7 is seen as a devine number.
Everyon one but us oldies forget that there were a number of Windows versions before Windows 3 and they too carried strange build numbers.
don’t forget windows NT 3.1,3.5 and 4
might want to rewrite this article
that windows 7 logo doesnt look quite right.. looks like the xp logo to me.
I don't remember specific version numbers from older versions of Windows, but essentially correct. Vista runs kernel version 6.0, I don't remember specifics of kernel versions back beyond win2k, especially with NT/9x running different kernels. Windows 7 was originally supposed to be kernel version 7. This got changed during development; Windows 7 actually runs kernel 6.1, but the name had been around long enough that it stuck, especially since it was differentiating from Vista.
Good article very interesting
That's correct Arnel, and thanks for pointing it out.
NT 4 series are among those version 4s like 9x and Me. And NT 3 is among those version 3s like Windows 3.1.
We actually do have another post that have a complete list of Windows Operation System version numbers. Check it out.
http://www.windows7hacker.com/index.php/2009/08…
Cheers.
Hi, you forgot to include Windows NT, several versions of which were released before Windows 2000.
Windows NT4, Windows 2000 = 5, Windows XP = 5.1, Windows Vista = 6, Windows 7 = 6.1. Yes, it’s confusing as hell 😀