Windows 7 - Why is the next Windows called Windows 7 ?

Windows 7 is the next operating system that Microsoft will release. It will be the successor of Windows Vista and was previously codenamed Windows Vienna. Well, Vienna is no more the new codename is Windows 7 which will be changed yet again once Microsoft comes up with another name for the next operating system.

Most people I have been talking with do not know that Windows 7 is not just another codename but also the version of the next operating system. It is currently named Windows 7 because Windows Vista was also internally called Windows 6, Windows XP was Windows 5, NT 4.0 was Windows 4 and then there was Windows 3 which most probably never had the pleasure to work with.

So the creative minds at Microsoft just selected the version number of the upcoming Windows operating system as the codename for it.

* Windows 7
* Windows 6 - Windows Vista
* Windows 5 - Windows XP
* Windows 4 - NT 4.0
* Windows 3

Source RSS Feeds - Microsoft

Microsoft got there own code Version table wrong and they didnt include Windows 2000

Version 4 was Windows NT
Version 5 was Windows 2000
Version 5.1 was Windows XP
Version 5.2 was the .NET codebase (Server 2003, XP 64bit)
Version 6 was Vista

I would accept any of the numerous ideas on the subject, without query. I merely reproduced an RSS entry. I myself have these notes,from about a year ago. I don't remember the source but it was probably somewhere deep in the Technet forums.:

The numbers are for NT based systems only. They split off from MS DOS operating systems at NT 3.1, which caused confusion, progressed through 3.5, 3.51, and 4 (4 was released parallel to windows 95). NT 5.0 was one of the most major releases of the NT OS, and was called windows 2000. Windows XP was almost a minor release designed to update some features and extend NT into the home consumer range. It merged the separate product lines back into one which created NT 5.1. XP is basically the NT kernel from 2000 with the user friendly OS features of the home line. Server 2003 and XP x64 are 5.2. It is designated as NT 5.1 and 5.2 (5.2 is Win XP 64, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Home Server.) Vista and Server 2008 share the NT 6.0 designation.

My first Windows was Windows/286. There was also a Windows/386 out at the same time.

I've been browsing and found a few references to Windows 286/386. There are several different versions of the same story. I seemed to have missed that one through the years, but basically it seems that it was Windows 2 (or a version thereof) for the 286 and 386 machine architecture. Doesn't really seem to fit in anywhere but it certainly is listed on many sites -- But not on a Microsoft site, oddly!