Yesterday was the official launch date of the new version of Windows, of which I've been a very happy user for over a month. It is so much better than Vista, in terms of resource usage, start up and shut down times, finding drivers and downloading them automatically, that I forgive it not being able to pick up my office network settings properly and loosing the Internet connection a few times every day (while, before you ask, the XP box sitting near it has zero problems!) I also like the improved UI and have spent some time writing Delphi applications that interact with libraries, change the taskbar buttons, and take advantage of Direct2D (as I posted last week).

What I find quite odd is that even in tables providing a comprehensive list of versions of Windows (like this one by Alan Zeichick) people are asking what the name of the next version of Windows will be, but forget to ask with version of Windows the current one is. In fact, while Windows version 6.0 was called Vista, the current version 6.1 is called Seven (or 7). But (technically) version 7 it isn't. Which is just a little bit confusing. So will next version be called "Eight" and be version number 7? 

In case you have any doubt, the following image from my System Configuration program, shows the version and name of the operating system I'm using (and that's the final version 6.1 build 7600):

Is technology fully controlled by marketing? At times this is the case, but that's quite true for any consumer-oriented business. Still it was nice when Windows 3.1 was called... 3.1!