There is a bit of a do about the name of the next Windows version. My last post told you that it will be called Windows 7, and Mike Nash explained why it will.

Do you care what it will be called? Isn't it more important that the version does as you want and/or expect? The Windows version which actually 'wowed' us all was not Vista. It was Windows 3/3.1. When you first saw Windows 3/3.1 running, did you think to yourself "How dumb is that name"? I doubt it somehow.

Were you wowed by the Windows 95 name or

1. the fact that you didn't have to load DOS first
2. the groovy new look
3. the startup tune
4. the transition from 'Unrecoverable Application Error' to 'General Protection Fault'

Were you wowed by the Windows XP name or

1. the Fisher-price color scheme
2. the lack of a visible transition from the DOS load to Windows shell (there was no DOS base)
3. the lack of BSOD's during the installation or directly after the first boot
4. the question as to whether XP equals XPerience or XPression

Let's take a quick look at the competition (word used here in its loosest form).

Apple decided on numbers as in MacOS 7. There was more excitement when MacOS 9 was released, but only because version 7 was not as good as one might have hoped.

Ubuntu has boxed clever in that it has two designations. For those of us who embarrass easily, we have a number as in 8.04 (year and month of release). For the more flamboyant, we have 'Hardy Heron'.

Do you still think that Windows 7 sounds bad?

I don't think that anybody cares too much what Windows versions are called. If the new version nomenclature causes you a problem, you need to get to your nearest pharmacy at your earliest convenience and ask somebody there for a life. When the pharmacist asks you how you would like it, in a rub on cream or an easy to swallow gel capsule, tell him/her that it doesn't matter just so long as it gives you a life.