ZOMG Win7 is just a SP of Vista because the Win7’s “version” is 6.1!? Then XP was just a service pack for Windows 2000 (5.0 vs 5.1) (I.e. “Version numbers” are just numbers, they do not, nor cannot, tell the whole OS story.)

Windows 7 Hacker - A list of Windows Operating System Version Number

“What I mean by version number is not necessary mean the OS name or service packs. For example, Windows 7, doesn’t necessary mean it’s the 7th version of Windows coming from Microsoft. As we have discussed before on our opinion of Why Windows 7 is named Seven. Here is a list of versions of Windows, since Windows Operating System 1.0. The distinguish of versions rather than OS names are important for developers and the distinguish of Windows structure. The list can also be found on MSDN OSVERSIONINFO Structure

Windows 2000 Professional	5.0.2195
Windows XP	5.1.2600	Current SP3
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition	5.2.3790
Windows Vista	6.0.6000	Current Version changed to 6.0.6002 with SP2
Windows 7	6.1.7600	RTM

…”

It irritates me when people jump up and down shouting that Win7 is just a SP for Vista because Win7’s “Version” is 6.1.x. Um a version number is just a number. Those same people would probably jump up and down if the version number changed to 7.0.x and broke allot of apps/installers.

Look people, every version of Windows is an evolution of the previous version. Do you really think every version is “new”? An OS is like your “[insert major appliance here]”. Think about every new model you’ve seen over that last few decades. How much is “new” versus an evolution over a previous model? [Insert car analogy here, etc, etc]

Yes, some changes have bigger impacts than others, like the new driver model introduced in Vista, but on the whole it’s still an evolution.

Would you really want something completely new every 3 years (cough… insert comment about people jumping up and down about the truly new UI in Office 2007 Ribbon)? No, you actually don’t. You just “want it work” don’t you? Me too.

That’s the real Windows 7 “version”, 6.1.JustWorks

;)