At the European Windows 7 launch event earlier today, Microsoft showed off this promotional teaser with a count-up of all the previous releases of Windows eventually reaching number seven of course.
To be perfectly clear, I’m no advocate of the “Windows 7 is actually 6.1″ nonsense, but one has to point out that a Windows release is clearly missing from this video’s timeline. Yes, that would be Windows Me.
Cool video otherwise 
34 Comments
iSimx
Microsoft still need to change their marketing team. That promotional video was pants….
Anyway looking forward to the launch of windows 7… 7….. 7…. 7…7…. ….. lol
John Sedlak
And 95 and 98 were rolled into one. And Windows 2000 is missing as well, although I guess some would argue that it doesn’t fit in the timeline.
Michael Stanclift
No love for the Windows NT?
Long Zheng
@John & @Michael: Well one could probably argue this is the “consumer” Windows timeline (before they merged) which means both NT and 2000 could be forgivable ignored.
planetarian
I believe win2k is considered more of a successor of the NT line before it became the standard kernel for the consumer editions.
Leo Davidson
Windows 2000 was a fantastic consumer OS even if it wasn’t marketed as one. It was far better than the Win98 and WinME alternatives of the time, even for gaming.
(Obviously subject to drivers for your hardware at the time, but it worked great on my hardware.)
I think Win2k was the biggest leap forward Windows has ever had and also the least well known. It’s clunky now, of course, but for me it’s the “golden moment” of Windows’ evolution, combining the best bits of Win9x and WinNT into something that, despite all the fear, worked great and without hassle both in the home and in the office.
| Balu |
LOL they showed this at Windows bloggers meet we had a few weeks back in Bangalore =D Didn’t know it was a new video then, I thought I had missed it somehow, now I know!
applepie
omg… it burns brain – seriously; it can be dangerous for people with epilepsy
Jeroen
Notice that from all the numbers, number 6 goes so fast that if you blink with your eyes you might miss it
Eduardo
Marketing lives in a parallel universe, where there no me
Cool video.
someone
O M G ! What a cheap brainless lacklustre video! LOL notice how little time/frames poor Vista gets.
dumbcommercial
But I thought Ballmer said SharePoint was Microsoft’s heartbeat?
NickelGreen
To be precise, even Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000 are missing. But that’s clearly not a point.
goograwks
Yeah, the memories. I remember pushing everyone I could to 2k even though it was for ‘business’. After the initial driver issues, it was fairly solid. imho
Anthony Castanza
It seemed to me like they were only including what they deem as “Major” releases… which explains the absence of other versions like 98SE.
Also, anyone else notice the the video is 1 minute 10 seconds long, aka 70 seconds? Coincidence? I think not.
AlwaysRight
I preferred these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFgYylqP_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-gqx18UTM
Windows 7 utter garbage in so many areas, I’ll stick with XP where the Explorer can at least not only look better and but also function better with decent shell extensions. Unlike Winshi7e where its all just gone to epic noob shite!
osu9400
No Me? Windows Me was essentially Win 98 with a new media features and not much else. It had the original Movie Maker, a new media player, and not much else. It actually wokred well if you installed it fresh. Upgrades were a disaster though. So Win 95/98/Me were essentially point releases of the same product. There was also Win98 SE in there too.
Win Me was also the last release in this old code base (thank goodness). The next release was XP and was based on the much more robust NT/2000 code base.
Long Zheng
@NickelGreen: Windows 95 and Windows 98 are both there.
Angus
Microsoft HK also didn’t mentioned Windows Me in their website: http://www.microsoft.com/hk/windows7/windowsevolution/
YetAnotherPC
“Seven . . . seven . . . seven . . . seven . . . seven . . . seven . . .”
Was that originally in the video, or did the uploader (for some reason) loop the last frame? That’s what it looked like, but I don’t know.
Brian Hoyt
@osu9400 Me actually introduced a new driver model that was later fleshed out in XP and allowed hardware makers to get ready for XP.
The 4.x code branch was 95/98/98:SE/Me and then the 5.x code branch started with 2000 (NT5 I prefer). However that would mean that 7 is still 6 since after all XP was 5.1 just like 7 is 6.1.
I just want to know if 8 will be 8 and if the 7.x code branch will just never exist.
Sunny
I guess it is based on internal version. Windows ME was 4.9 which is just fancy version of windows 98
osu9400
@BrianHoyt – I don’t think that’s accurate. Maybe you are thinking of NDIS which I believe was introduced in ME. I am fairly certain the same driver model was used through the 9x code stream (which included ME).
iFadey
Cool!
That’s nice video
Troy
As stated above, Microsoft is obviously describing 95/98/98SE/ME as 4.x
The release that really got forgotten is Windows NT4 Workstation – might not have been used much at home but it was still a desktop OS….
Anthony
Hahaha I love how Vista has the least amount of screentime (and they combined 95 with 98!)
glenncal
Did anyone notice the “Windows 7 kills Snow Leopard” attributed to Gizmodo in the video. I believe it is very misleading to put that in the commercial when the article where this quote was mentioned is http://gizmodo.com/5272999/windows-7-kills-snow-leopard-and-eats-it , written way before both OSs where released and was not even referencing the quality of the OS, just the number of people who are searching for it. Their actual (p)review is much more balanced, and if anything they also have an article which is almost fanboy-praising Snow Leopard (perhaps as a joke) – http://gizmodo.com/5288294/flame-war-snow-leopard-vs-windows-7-fight .
Windows 7 is definitely the best Windows ever but I don’t believe they should have used such a tactic, even because there are many other reviews they could have quoted which praise it legitimately.
That said it could be that there is another “Windows 7 kills Snow Leopard” quote somewhere at Gizmodo which I missed
Matt Sharpe
I liked it until the chanting “seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven seven” which was awful and ruined it.
Aside from that, this is the first actual attempt I’ve seen to justify the name “Windows 7″.
I still don’t really agree with it though.
What about Windows 2000? Me? Or the fact that actually the version number is 6.1? lol
osu9400
@MattSharpe
Me is part of the same family as 95/98. Not much changed. It doesn’t deserve it’s own number -just a point release. The only confusing part is doing a winver on Win 7 and getting 6.1.
Current code base
Vista = 6
XP = 5.1
2000 = 5
NT4 = 4
NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51 were the first releases here.
Old code base:
Win 95/98/98SE/Me = Chicago = 4
Windows 3.0/3.1/WFW 3.11 = 3
Windows 2
Windows 1
rm20010
Is it just me that finds it funny how quickly they skipped over ’six’?
macbirdie
Cool video, although “Friends” had a better count-up – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZmnqY5iJUg
Sanket
Well if they included ME then Windows 7 would become the 8th version I suppose
Drew
@rm20010: Like a quarter of a milisecond! Poor Vista.
Miles
And where is Bob? I actually knew a guy who used it!
Leave a Reply
Windows: el latido del corazón de Microsoft | MuyWindows
[...] como acertadamente señala Long Zheng en su Blog se han olvidado de Windows Me (no se me ocurre por qué), el vídeo muestra en forma de [...]
Microsoft video omits Me from Windows history · Video Beijing
[...] Here is the original: Microsoft video omits Me from Windows history [...]
Windows 7 begins to release to the public across the world « IT News Blog
[...] Update #2: Microsoft showed a promotional video at the launch event earlier today in the United Kingdom that counts up the releases of Windows. Notice that they omitted Windows ME. Thanks Long Zheng! [...]
WrapUp: Microsoft Reveals How Windows 7 is “Version 7″, VistaSwitcher Improves Alt-Tab, and More
[...] Microsoft Reveals How Windows 7 is “Version 7″ Microsoft has assembled a video that clarifies exactly how they consider Windows 7 to be the 7th version of Windows. The order? Windows 1, Windows 2, Windows 3, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7. Who did they leave out from the consumer lineup? Poor ol’ Windows Me, that’s who. I think they’re trying to wipe it from their memory (no pun intended). [...]
WrapUp: Microsoft Reveals How Windows 7 is “Version 7″, VistaSwitcher Improves Alt-Tab, and More | PC Software News
[...] Microsoft Reveals How Windows 7 is “Version 7″ Microsoft has assembled a video that clarifies exactly how they consider Windows 7 to be the 7th version of Windows. The order? Windows 1, Windows 2, Windows 3, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7. Who did they leave out from the consumer lineup? Poor ol’ Windows Me, that’s who. I think they’re trying to wipe it from their memory (no pun intended). [...]
ROUNDUP – Twitter Lists, Google GPS, Mac AntiVirus, SkyDrive Explorer and more
[...] See how Microsoft reached to Windows 7 [...]