How We Got Windows 7
It’s now only a matter of hours before Windows 7 officially hits the market. I bet the folks in Redmond are busily planning their “release parties” (the biggest joke of the season thus far) and hoping to get some downtime after the product ships. But how did we get to “7″ in the first place? Given the strange and sordid genealogy of Windows, a quick rundown and history lesson seems in order.
Originally, Windows wasn’t even an OS. Instead it was just an add-on to DOS (remember that?). You installed DOS 5 or 6, then put Windows on top of it. You booted to a DOS prompt, then started Windows when you wanted it. In those days, Windows 1 (which no one used), 2, and 3 were the available versions. But in around 1994, things started getting complicated.
First, Windows NT 3 (”New Technology” showed up. It was a totally new, 32-bit OS and few applications were available for it. It did not boot a DOS kernel, and DOS was only available in a console window. It was designed for the professional/technical market. At roughly the same time, Windows 95 came out. It was the first “user level” version to boot directly to the Windows logo…but it was still DOS under the covers.
Later, we got Windows 98 and NT 4.0. 98 started the process of removing the underlying DOS kernel, but it was still there in all its 16-bit glory. NT 4.0 was actually a pretty good OS, and more applications became available for it (mostly from Microsoft). Then there was the much-maligned Windows ME (”Millennium Edition”) at the user level, circa 1999. Few remember it, and they’re still in therapy.
With Windows 2000, NT and the ‘9x’ versions started converging. DOS was basically gone by this time, and 2000 was a very good, stable platform that integrated the 32-bit NT kernel with some nice user-level improvements. But then Microsoft started selling “home,” “professional,” and “server” editions. The whole morass of “which release do I want?” started getting worse. For myself, I’ve only ever used Professional editions and generally despise anything that says “Home” on the label.
Vista got its name, allegedly, because some clever idiot in marketing decided you could “see a vista through a window” (or something like that). Well, we all know how that ended.
Now we have Windows 7, which indicates Redmond is going back to the traditional 1, 2, 3 naming path. ‘95/’98 were “4,” 2000 was “5,”, XP/Vista were “6.” Or so I’ve read, anyway. Now we get to see whether it sells. And I’ll bet some people in Redmond are partying down while burying copies of Vista in a cemetery at midnight. Probably with stakes driven through the CD and installer guides.