Microsoft video omits Me from Windows history

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 🙂

45 insightful thoughts

  1. 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

  2. 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.

  3. @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. 😛

  4. I believe win2k is considered more of a successor of the NT line before it became the standard kernel for the consumer editions.

  5. 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.

  6. 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!

  7. O M G ! What a cheap brainless lacklustre video! LOL notice how little time/frames poor Vista gets.

  8. 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

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. “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.

  12. @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.

  13. @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).

  14. 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….

  15. 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 😉

  16. 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

  17. @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

  18. Vista and 7 are more similar than 2000 and XP, yet they get counted as separate major versions while 2K/XP gets lumped together. That’s just nonsense; the name 7 was just a marketing thing and now they’re bending over backwards trying to justify it.

  19. If only noobs weren’t noobs, then they’d realize just how similar the shite pile was between vista scrap and 7 junk. ME/Vista/7 all belong on a tip.

  20. Sounds to me like OSU9400 has the correct answer. And of course 7 is actually 6.1–just a marketing ploy to distance themselves from “Vista”.

  21. “Windows 7 is actually 6.1″ is no nonsense. That is the internal version number. And the difference between Vista and / is not as big as they want it to sound like. Vista has become much faster over the years, but people still bad mouth it because the memories of that slow first version won’t die. That is why Microsoft want Windows 7 to sound like a whole new OS.

    But take a look at these test results:
    http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/w…view?page=3%2C3
    and
    http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?…chmark-results/

    If you compare Vista to Windows 7, the performance is more or less equal. If you take away the results that only give a highly marginal difference (0-2% in both ways), then Vista WINS over Windows 7 in these tests with 9-8.

    Both Vista SP2 and Windows 7 are based on that slow first version of Windows Vista… Sure, improvements have been made, but I don’t consider Windows 7 to be that overwhelming groundbreaking new OS that they claim it to be themselves…

  22. “AlwaysRight”, the first video (below) you posted incorrectly captions the comparison as the OS Shown is Windows Vista Ultimate and not Wiindows 7!

    Misleading isn’t it ???

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