A stupid question...

[Matthew]

Shouldn't Windows 7 be Windows 9?

As I remember it there was:

Windows 3.1
Windows 95 = Windows 4
Windows 98 = Windows 5
Windows 2000 (MEdition) = Windows 6
Windows XP = Windows 7
Windows Vista = Windows 8

therefore

"Windows 7" = Windows 9

QED

[Craig]

Maybe since there was little, if any, difference between Windows 95, 98, 2000 and Me edition they are just counting it as one.

[Keith]

I don't like it when things are given numbers like that, I can't remember what the latest version is! I thought the numbering was something like win 3.1, win NT, XP, vista, 7? ME and 95/98 were developed seperately from the NT stuff that it's now based on. As usual, I'm sure someone who knows better will correct me!

Anyway, I tried the beta with my computer and it looks pretty and seems to work fine. I had a problem at first that my graphics card wasn't one of the ones it supported, so the graphics weren't good enough to play solitaire..... yup, solitaire has glow-y cards when they're selected, and I didn't even bother waiting to see what it was like when you tried to move them.

I ended up buying a new old graphics card on ebay, and it's all very nice, but kinda vista-ish, i'd think (I've never used vista, only seen it a couple of times).

Drivers for everything else came automatically, except for my usb wireless, but the vista driver for that worked perfectly.

As an aside, I installed kubuntu on the same machine, and I think I'll probably end up using that more. The only thing windows has that it doesn't is office. (I don't like or trust openoffice to be as compatable as it claims)

[alhaynes]

The sequence does (sort of) make sense. Note that Windows NT (including 2000) was a different type of Windows to the consumer variants (3.1 etc.) until XP.

The (consumer) sequence is as follows:

• 1.0
  2.0, Windows 286 (2.1). Windows 386 (2.1 *)
  3.0, 3.1 *, 3.11 *
  Windows 95 (4.0 *), Windows 98 (4.10). Windows 98 SE (4.10 *), Windows ME (4.90)
  Windows XP (5.1 *)
  Windows Vista (6.0)
  Windows 7 (6.1?)

NT had versions 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 5.0 (known as 2000)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows for a list of versions.

Andrew

P.S. * denotes versions I have used.

[orudge]

Yes, Windows 7 is, technically speaking, Windows 6.1. Which just seems rather stupid to me. Either release it as "Windows 6.1", or release it as "Windows 7" and give it the version number of 7.0.

I notice Microsoft tends to go in a pattern of "Windows suckiness", with alternate versions being good:

- Windows 3.0 (was OK, but a bit buggy, etc)
- Windows 3.1 (pretty good for what it was)

- Windows 95 (fairly good, but some limitations/problems)
- Windows 95 OSR2 (much better)

- Windows 98 (a bit slow and buggy)
- Windows 98 SE (much better)

- Windows Me (nuff said)
- Windows XP (pretty decent, particularly after SP2)

- Windows Vista (nuff said again, methinks)
- Windows 7 (Vista as it should have been)

I've installed Windows 7 in VMWare, and it seems to work pretty well. To be fair, though, I recently installed Vista (64-bit) as my main OS, and once a lot of the guff is turned off, it's not too bad.

[Delts]

Keith, with regards to open office the only issue I've ever had is spacing being a bit off when swapping between it and MS Office. It actually is totally compatible from my own experience.

[orudge]

Microsoft Office tends to work fairly well under Wine or CrossOver, Keith. Certainly 97, 2000, XP and 2003 should work OK, 2007 might have a few more issues. I've never been too fond of OpenOffice either, I use MS Office on my Windows machine and my Mac quite happily (and I don't use Linux enough as a main desktop OS to need to worry about office applications just now).

[niall]

[Craig]