Why Windows ME isn't called as 100? (9x Question)

[Drapy]

Oh, and yeah, why Windows ME has that name (Millennium Edition)?

[LangsamSpieler]

Oh, and yeah, why Windows ME has that name (Millennium Edition)?

Because it’s release in 2000.

[Drapy]

Oh, and yeah, why Windows ME has that name (Millennium Edition)?

Because it’s release in 2000.

Millennium = 1000
but released in 2000

[Battler]

Millennium is a 1000-year period. The year 2000 marked the entry into the 3rd millennium.

[Overdoze]

Millennium is a 1000-year period. The year 2000 marked the entry into the 3rd millennium.

That, and it also kinda nicely fits with its NT counterpart, Windows 2000.

[LangsamSpieler]

And Windows ME are released in the Year 2000, Windows 2000 on 1999. See the Bootscreen of example the German Version of Windows 2000:

[AlphaBeta]

No, Windows 2000 was officially released in February 2000. The RTM build itself was compiled in the middle of December 1999, that's why the copyright year is 1999.

[os2fan2]

One of the Y2K bugs is to print the year as "19"&STRING$(N), so the y2000 is printed as 19100. You can see this fault in some programs like MSDOS.EXE.

So it would hardly go a treat to advertise their product as Windows 100, when this bug exists,

OT: It took only four years for the world to run into their next bug. Apparently some gaming console wasn't told about leap years, and the next leap year was 2004.

[DanielOosterhuis]

Because Microsoft's naming schemes are all over the place. To be serious though, at this point they were still going with naming the Windows version after the year or time period it was released in (95 in 1995, 98 in 1998, 2000 in 2000 of course), so instead of naming it Windows 00 (which would be a weird name), and given 2000 was taken, they went with ME.

It also makes sense to a degree that the next Home and Professional workstation version of Windows would be XP, given it adheres to the two letter name that ME had, but abandoned the year naming scheme as Microsoft had decided to give that to the Server versions of Windows, one naming scheme they fortunately have stuck with. Afterwards, they went for a fancy name, Vista, then moved on to single number names that didn't make a whole lot of sense (7, 8, 10). 7 and 8(.1) didn't make a whole lot of sense since the underlying NT versions were NT 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 respectively, with Windows 10 they just moved to NT 10 to finally have it make more sense, but then it doesn't make sense that NT jumped from 6.3 to 10. But as I said, Microsoft isn't hugely consistent in naming conventions outside of the Windows Server operating systems.

[MasonSparkle]

Offtopic Comment

Afterwards, they went for a fancy name, Vista, then moved on to single number names that didn't make a whole lot of sense (7, 8, 10). 7 and 8(.1) didn't make a whole lot of sense since the underlying NT versions were NT 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 respectively, with Windows 10 they just moved to NT 10 to finally have it make more sense, but then it doesn't make sense that NT jumped from 6.3 to 10.

Simple answer: Because of Neptune.
Windows 10 jumped straight from NT 6.3 to NT 10.0 because Neptune had plans for a 64-bit version known as NT64. IIRC this was before there were any plans for a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 or Triton which was in planning stages at the time; Triton was also planned to have a 64-bit version.

[DanielOosterhuis]

Offtopic Comment

Simple answer: Because of Neptune.
Windows 10 jumped straight from NT 6.3 to NT 10.0 because Neptune had plans for a 64-bit version known as NT64. IIRC this was before there were any plans for a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 or Triton which was in planning stages at the time; Triton was also planned to have a 64-bit version.

Offtopic Comment

Is there any evidence Microsoft actually skipped 6.4 due to Neptune? Because I seriously doubt a 64 bit build of Neptune was ever even completed. And even if it were, and it somehow would cause incompatibility errors with legacy apps thinking they are running on Neptune, Microsoft had already altered the old Winver API that gives the NT version to legacy apps that use it to verify what Windows version they are running on, to think they are running on 6.2 (Windows 8), since 8.1. Also, beta versions of Windows 10 did bear the NT6.4 version number, which to me indicates it was just done to finally have the NT version and Windows version line up, unlike what happened with 7, 8 and 8.1.

[Overdoze]

Not sure how you managed to implicate Neptune into this, considering it was never released, therefore why would version 6.4 be a problem for applications?

[AlphaBeta]

Offtopic Comment

Afterwards, they went for a fancy name, Vista, then moved on to single number names that didn't make a whole lot of sense (7, 8, 10). 7 and 8(.1) didn't make a whole lot of sense since the underlying NT versions were NT 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 respectively, with Windows 10 they just moved to NT 10 to finally have it make more sense, but then it doesn't make sense that NT jumped from 6.3 to 10.

Simple answer: Because of Neptune.
Windows 10 jumped straight from NT 6.3 to NT 10.0 because Neptune had plans for a 64-bit version known as NT64. IIRC this was before there were any plans for a 64-bit version of Windows 2000 or Triton which was in planning stages at the time; Triton was also planned to have a 64-bit version.

Wrong. Windows 10 jumped to NT 10.0 for nothing more but marketing reasons. Also, Windows NT had a 64-bit version since NT 3.1 development as it ran on the Alpha AXP processor which was 64-bit and was supported all the way to Windows 2000 RC1.

[DOS]

Windows 10 jumped to NT 10.0 for nothing more but marketing reasons.

Exactly. Version numbers are something that marketing teams come up with, they're not generated for the benefit of technical people. I've worked at a number of places where you internally (and sometimes even externally when talking to customers about what is coming up) avoid using any version numbers to refer to unreleased software because even if marketing say it's going to be called X they'll probably change their mind and then everyone will be confused. You can see this historically if you look at magazine articles discussing the "upcoming" Chicago, Longhorn, etc. releases.

Marketing just try to come up with something that sounds cool. If non-server versions of Windows had gone 3.1 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9, that would actually sound pretty boring to me.

I guess "X" was something that marketing people thought was cool when when XP and Xbox came out, for example.

[LBPPlayer7]

Windows 10 jumped to NT 10.0 for nothing more but marketing reasons.

Exactly. Version numbers are something that marketing teams come up with, they're not generated for the benefit of technical people. I've worked at a number of places where you internally (and sometimes even externally when talking to customers about what is coming up) avoid using any version numbers to refer to unreleased software because even if marketing say it's going to be called X they'll probably change their mind and then everyone will be confused. You can see this historically if you look at magazine articles discussing the "upcoming" Chicago, Longhorn, etc. releases.

Marketing just try to come up with something that sounds cool. If non-server versions of Windows had gone 3.1 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8 -> 9, that would actually sound pretty boring to me.

I guess "X" was something that marketing people thought was cool when when XP and Xbox came out, for example.

FYI the X in Xbox is a shortening for Direct X, not just because the marketing team found it "cool". It was shortened probably because it was too long, but XP probably was to sound cool to get people to upgrade as you said.

[Battler]

XP is also a shortening, for eXPerience.

[winnt32]

"buy windows 100 today!"

it's pretty obvious lol

[A.S. aka nanocomp.invent.]

XP is also a shortening, for eXPerience.

You know some people actually mistaken XP for eXtreme Performance, only to later relize that there was no performance boost much.

[MrBurgerKing]

Microsoft branded ME as a lifestyle product with digital media applications and enhancements, so the new name fits better with that marketing. Most marketing departments at the time wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to brand everything as millennium related. I also think Microsoft changed to a fresh, trendy new naming scheme with names instead of numbers just to make all of their new operating systems seem even newer. Fast forward to 7, and minimalist numbers are more modern and trendy, so Microsoft changed the scheme again. They were also probably trying to avoid the negative stigma clouding Vista.
Intel also did this, changing their mainstream and high end parts from numbers, to celeron/pentium/core2, to i3/i5/i7.

[Battler]

Microsoft branded ME as a lifestyle product with digital media applications and enhancements, so the new name fits better with that marketing. Most marketing departments at the time wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to brand everything as millennium related. I also think Microsoft changed to a fresh, trendy new naming scheme with names instead of numbers just to make all of their new operating systems seem even newer. Fast forward to 7, and minimalist numbers are more modern and trendy, so Microsoft changed the scheme again. They were also probably trying to avoid the negative stigma clouding Vista.
Intel also did this, changing their mainstream and high end parts from numbers, to celeron/pentium/core2, to i3/i5/i7.

I suspect Microsoft shot their naming opportunity in the leg when they used the name Windows 2000 for NT 5.0. They should have released NT 5.0 as simply NT 5.0 and then ME as 2000. Also, XP's two-letter name fits in with NT.
Also, the Intel CPU's are Core i3/Core i5/Core i7, and there are still Pentiums and even Celerons, as well as Atoms, so Intel has hardly switched back to a number scheme.

[nixie]

I suspect Microsoft shot their naming opportunity in the leg when they used the name Windows 2000 for NT 5.0. They should have released NT 5.0 as simply NT 5.0 and then ME as 2000. Also, XP's two-letter name fits in with NT.
Also, the Intel CPU's are Core i3/Core i5/Core i7, and there are still Pentiums and even Celerons, as well as Atoms, so Intel has hardly switched back to a number scheme.

Due to the year-based naming, a lot of people think 2000 is part of the 9x line or even another name for millenium, not to mention arguing well beyond necessity about windows 97, which was more likely word 97.

[Battler]

Actually, Windows 98 was called Windows 97 in the press before it was finally named Windows 98 - the initial plan was to release it in 1997. Also, Nashville 999 calls itself Windows 96 in one part - the "Uninstall Windows 96" entry in Add/Remove Programs. So clearly, even Windows 96 was planned.

[Overdoze]

I'd say those are more like preliminary, sort of placeholder names not necessarily done by the marketing team. I mean, look at all the name variants used in early Whistler.

[SpiralVortex]

I suspect Microsoft shot their naming opportunity in the leg when they used the name Windows 2000 for NT 5.0. They should have released NT 5.0 as simply NT 5.0 and then ME as 2000. Also, XP's two-letter name fits in with NT.

Actually, according to the press at the time, the plan was that 2000 would be the successor to 98, finally unifying the MS-DOS based and NT-based versions of Windows. MS put a great deal of effort into improving the MS-DOS compatibility of Windows 2000 (compared to NT4) in order to make the change as seamless as possible for regular home users. It's the reason, for example, that they added Soundblaster emulation to NTVDM - that was so that you could play your DOS games in Windows 2000. They also greatly improved compatibility with things like DOS/4GW extenders as used by the likes of Doom.

Sadly for MS, they couldn't quite complete their goal as there were still plenty of badly-behaved games which didn't work well. The hardware vendors were also lagging a bit, as even though Windows 98 brought WDM drivers (which worked with 2000) there were still plenty of companies who were dragging their heels (some hardware even involved loading a DOS driver in config.sys, which would then result in a lot of thunking between 16- and 32-bit code in Windows).

As a result, one final version of the MS-DOS-based version of Windows was rushed out, with a few tweaks to steer people away from using the DOS-based portion of it.

18 months later things were very different: people had been weaned off their DOS-based games, hardware vendors had finally started to produce NT-based or WDM-based drivers and the loss of being able to boot into pure DOS was much less of an issue. (Of course, you could still do it by making an MS-DOS boot disk, albeit that gave you a hacked-around version of the ME boot disk!)

Anyway, 2000 was meant to be the OS everyone used. ME was an afterthought and had an afterthought name!

(Source: PC Plus, PC Pro, Personal Computer World - all in the UK - in the 1998-2001 timeframe).

Postscript: I kept my old PC from that era, as I knew things were going to change forever with XP. It's a P3/450 with an AWE64 ISA sound card and a Voodoo2. To this day, it still dual boots between 98SE and 2000, happily running pretty much anything from the DOS era of gaming. DOSBox may be good, but the real thing is better!

Also, the Intel CPU's are Core i3/Core i5/Core i7, and there are still Pentiums and even Celerons, as well as Atoms, so Intel has hardly switched back to a number scheme.

In this case, the reason they switched from the 286, 386, etc was much less glamourous - you can't trademark a number, hence the 80586 was renamed to Pentium.

[Battler]

Actually, according to the press at the time, the plan was that 2000 would be the successor to 98,

I'd like to see some sources. Over here, the WIN.INI magazine (which had very close contact with Microsoft and even received pre-release builds from them) never called NT 5.0 (later, Windows 2000), as anything other than a successor to NT 4.0. Never was it touted as the successor to Windows 98. That makes no sense either, considering that a big chunk of its development coincided with the development of Windows 98.
The Anti-Trust documents never mentioned that either, at first they did mention "Memphis NT" as the successor to both Windows 95 and NT 4.0, but then that plan gradually shifts to Neptune (or, as they capitalize it, NepTune), planned to be the successor to both Windows 98 and NT 5.0.

Anyway, 2000 was meant to be the OS everyone used. ME was an afterthought and had an afterthought name!

(Source: PC Plus, PC Pro, Personal Computer World - all in the UK - in the 1998-2001 timeframe).

Those publications must have been wrong then, especially since Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) started development before Windows 98. Windows 2000 never had a home edition, not even planned (again, per the Anti-Trust Documents).