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Windows 7: attention to details?

So I had to buy a copy of Windows 7 for a job, so I actually pre-ordered it some time ago at Amazon UK to have an extra discount (not a bad thing, at the end I paid the Ultimate version less than half than it’s sold here; full version, not upgrade). I’m not going to comment for now about the experience with it; this is just a funny post if you want to take a laugh:

I’ll leave to you the comments.

Comments 10
  1. Vista had kernel version 6.0. Windows 7 has 6.1. This was made specifically for compativility reasons for poorly written programs/installers that only check the major version number.

  2. It’s been a discussion since the first RC.The main reason to use 6.1 instead of 7.0 is for API compatibility. Most software just checks the major version of the API in order to see if it’s compatible or not, so, by using 6.X instead of 7.X many software designed with Vista in mind will be available in Windows 7 since day 0.

  3. Why do you have a DOS prompt open, Diego? It’s Windows! You don’t use a command line in Windows! Explorer gives you everything you need!!!! :-)(Here’s to hoping that now I won’t get the error I got yesterday about not having permission to submit a comment…)

  4. Guess Microsoft really had good guys at marketing, at least guys good enough at “ass pulling”:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/… given that so many people seem to simply accept that “it was done out of compatibility”.Sorry, my view for that follows more that of a developer than that of a marketeer: Windows 7 kernel *is* simply version 6.1. Not out of compatibility but rather because it’s nowhere near a major rewrite of the kernel, and thus calling it 7.0, from the engineering point of view would have been silly.The part that doesn’t add up is calling it *Seven* and insisting on this *7* thing even when their own version number calls them up liars.

  5. Well, I guess you confuse (or *want* to confuse) the version of the OS kernel and the version of the whole OS. ;)In Windows 2000 for example, the kernel version was 5.0 and not 2000.0. And Gentoo Linux 10.0 doesn’t use Linux kernel 10.0.xxx either, doesn’t it?

  6. Microsoft doesn’t even attempt to say 7 is completely new or a major update to Vista. It is a minor update to Vista, as it was always supposed to be. The update from 5.0 to 5.1 (2000 to XP) was bigger. If Vista would have been successful, 7 would have been called Vista R2, but Vista flopped, and not because of technical problems but bad PR, and the brand was scrubbed, so R2 got called 7. Server 2008 (Vista SP1 inside) was successful, so its name was left, and the server variant (7 inside) is called Server 2008 R2. Source: http://arstechnica.com/micr

  7. Compatibility is an issue that does come up when changing version numbers. Microsoft has many artices about how to do so correctly. Like Flameeyes though, I don’t think it the main reason. Windows 7 simply isn’t the great new thing compared to Windows Vista that people make it out to be. The truth is that Windows Vista has been out for a while so developers have gotten off their asses and updated software to work with things like UAC.I think the seeming popularity of Windows 7 is verification of Microsoft’s Mojave Project marketing project. Windows 7 is Windows Vista with a new name and a new skin. And people magically start liking it.Windows 7 does have new improvements such as the removal of some kernel locks allowing Windows 7 to scale further and make better use of multicore systems. A side effect of some of these improvements is better power management with things like timer coalescing.

  8. bq. Sorry, my view for that follows more that of a developer than that of a marketeer: Windows 7 kernel is simply version 6.1. Not out of compatibility but rather because it’s nowhere near a major rewrite of the kernel, and thus calling it 7.0, from the engineering point of view would have been silly.Yes, true. But they could have hidden this better at least in the system information and the dos prompt header. It wouldn’t be hard to make the APIs return a v6.1.7600, at the same time internally jump to v7.0. Personally couldn’t care less – just refreshed my gentoo installation by reinstalling from scratch, migrating my proven set of packages and moving in place the old config files and here it is racing away 😀

  9. Let me put this clear. So this so-called Windows 7 is really 6.1, which is a smaller upgrade than that of Windows Mobile 6.0 to 6.5? And I have to pay for it? How much? Naaahhh.

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