Official Explanation on the 7th number of the Next Vista

There were so many theories on why Microsoft has chosen the number 7 in the next Windows Vista. Mike Nash quickly posted his explanation — Why 7? In an excerpt of his post:

Anyway, the numbering we used is quite simple. The very first release of Windows was Windows 1.0, the second was Windows 2.0, the third Windows 3.0.

Here’s where things get a little more complicated. Following Windows 3.0 was Windows NT which was code versioned as Windows 3.1. Then came Windows 95, which was code versioned as Windows 4.0. Then, Windows 98, 98 SE and Windows Millennium each shipped as 4.0.1998, 4.10.2222, and 4.90.3000, respectively. So we’re counting all 9x versions as being 4.0.

Windows 2000 code was 5.0 and then we shipped Windows XP as 5.1, even though it was a major release we didn’t’ want to change code version numbers to maximize application compatibility.

That brings us to Windows Vista, which is 6.0. So we see Windows 7 as our next logical significant release and 7th in the family of Windows releases.

That should settle all talks on the journey to number 7 since there are lots more Windows version if all releases were counted. But apparently, the team decided to count bundles into one like the 9xx version.

I think they just wanted to hit the number 7, as in “Lucky 7″.