What? Microsoft being seemingly incoherent and inconsistent when it comes to naming new windows _versions_? Say it ain't so! It's not like they ever done that before. Rant alert.
-first it was version numbers (1.01 through 3.11)
-Then they added sufixes: NT
-then came the years but only the last two digits, remember this was before Y2K bug
95, 98
-then they added sufixes again: 98 SE
-then they went back to version numbers NT 4
-back to years except now with four digits, just to show it didn't suffer from the Y2K bug
(and because "00" was just plain silly - something that was obvious back in 1995 btw): 2000
-then no more years but add a sufix: ME, XP
-nah, this doesn't sound right, back to years: 2003
-that does it! No more version numbers, years or sufixes, let's confuse the heck out of everybody and simply attach another word in: Vista
Not to mention what was "workstation" became "professional" (as if implying any other editions are unprofessional), and "server" which was just another edition but then became part of the windows product name in Windows Server 2003. Or the fact that XP is actually mentioned as "version 2002" in system properties.
Best of all, throughout all of this, Office, Visual Studio, IE, etc. all mixed and matched product name/version with sufixes/years/version numbers. And I'm just getting started, who didn't laugh (with sadness really) when they saw win2000's bootscreen for the first time? "built on NT technologies" anyone?
If you ask someone who's simply uses a computer to work/play a few games which version of windows is more recent ME or XP, how can they tell? Years in the product name were bad enough when they were introduced with 95 but at least MS's explanation that it was doing away with the "exotic" version numbers to ease more people into computers was sound. But it has been ten years now, even someone who doesn't know much about computers knows that 6.0 is more recent than 5.1, and besides, MS continued to keep version numbers (IE, DX, Media Player, etc.). Complete computer neophytes, that just want to download songs to their iPod, know that iTunes 4.0 is more recent than iTunes 3.0 and thus probably better.
IMHO, Windows 2000 should have been called Windows 5.0 and just go from there. This would actually work with ME being released after 2k because ME is 4.9 which follows since it's older tech. But if they absolutely did not want version numbers then years was still the lesser evil as it still denotes progress and chronological/featureset relation between versions.
Sorry for the tangent but my anal retentive self just believes these subjects are best left to the Politics/Religion forum lest I get an ulcera.
