Microsoft Math

We're looking to buy a new PC for my wife, her's is getting on in years and starting to get slow with all these newfangled whippersnapper programs that require more CPU and Memory than her 8 year old machine can provide.

One of the things I'm insisting on is that we wait until after October 22nd so that her PC will come with Windows 7 instead of Vista. Not that I don't like Vista - I'm using it now - but why pay for an on-the-way-out-the-door-to-the-scrap-heap OS when a shiny new and highly-lauded OS is only a few months away?

The thing is, I still can't get over the fact that they're calling it Windows 7. Yes, I know people have been talking about this fact for a bit, but for those who are unaware, sit with me a while.

Windows 1.0, 2.0 came and went but it wasn't until 3.0 that it really got a strong foothold over DOS... at least in my world. There were various flavors of 3.0 (3.1, 3.11) but these are all technically Windows 3.0. The next iteration of Windows would be Windows NT, which was a winner until the dawn of Windows 95 (and all those "Start me up" Rolling Stones commercials... remember those?) For those still keeping track, we're on Windows 5 now.

Anyway, the rest of the 90s rambled on with new versions of Windows that were basically just more stable versions of Win95: Win 98/98se, Windows 2000/Me (or Millennium... I guess the "e" was for "entertainment"? or maybe "eh"?) which fall on the list as Win 6 & 7. Windows 8 would be XP. Vista: Windows 9. And now Windows 7 should really be Windows 10.

So what gives, Microsoft? Why the creative math? Is this all just because Apple beat you to the punch with "OSX"?