Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Windows version numbers and why Windows 7 is not WinVer 7

Windows Branded Version WinVer version
Windows 1.0 1.0
Windows 2.0 2.0
Windows 3.0 3.0
Windows NT 3.1
Windows 95 4.0
Windows 98 4.0.1998
Windows 98 SE 4.10.2222
Windows Millennium 4.90.3000
Windows 2000 5.0
Windows XP 5.1*
Windows Vista 6.0
Windows 7 6.1*
* even though these versions of Windows OS represented a major advancement in the technology, design, etc., the version number used was an increment over the previous version so as to preserve application compatibility with the older Windows version.

source: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/14/why-7.aspx

For a much more in-depth list of Windows versions and release dates, look at the following Wikipedia article: List of Microsoft Windows versions

3 comments:

Dr. Koutheir Attouchi said...

WRONG DATA: The first Windows NT was 3.11, then came Windows NT4 with version number 4.0 (yes like Windows 95, but much more sophisticated, technically). So you should split Windows NT into:
Windows NT 3.11
Windows NT 4

Anonymous said...

What about NT 3.51 ;) ?

Anonymous said...

NT 3.1 was indeed the first. Then 3.5, then 3.51. I installed them professionally when they first came out.