Windows 7 Now Officially Named... Windows 7

From this point on, the much anticipated update to Microsoft’s Windows product line will be referred to by its final release name. Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, posted on the Windows Vista Blog that the operating system has now been officially named "Windows 7".

That’s right, the upcoming operating system has been named the exact same as its codename, which according to Nash is "a first for Windows." Since Microsoft stopped using numerical product names for consumer and business versions of their operating systems after Windows 2000, this may come as a surprise to some. However, Nash stated reasons why the software giant decided on this rather uncreative name.

Microsoft has tried many naming schemes in the past. First there was Windows 3.x which was simply a version number. Then there were of course the names based on the year of release such as Windows 95. Windows Me, XP and Vista followed using what Nash referred to as "aspirational monikers." Microsoft did not want to detract attention from the fact that Windows 7 is based on the same kernel as Windows Vista and Server 2008, which is why they avoided the "aspirational monikers" of current operating systems.

This time around they wanted to keep things simple. So why call it Windows 7 ? Nash gave a blunt explanation in his blog entry : "Simply put, this is the seventh release of Windows, so therefore ’Windows 7’ just makes sense."

Quite clearly there are more than seven Windows releases. It is possible that Nash is referring to the seventh major release of a Windows NT-based operating system, although the kernel version number is not 7.x.

More details about the new operating system will be released at the Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. A "developer only" pre-beta release will be demonstrated to attendees at both events.