Microsoft Product Name Gripes

Question. Who names Microsoft products?
Answer. Different people in different departments that never talk to each other, that’s who.

Background: Three of Microsoft's most popular and visible products are Windows 98, Windows NT and the Office suite. Both Windows NT and Office come in multiple flavors.

Gripe: The version of Windows NT that is due out in February 2000, was originally called NT version 5, a perfectly logical extension of NT 3.5, 3.51 and 4.0. Then someone decided to get with the program and changed the name to Windows 2000. Besides breaking up the continuity of the version numbers for us long time NT users, it also dropped the NT a double dose of confusion. Without the "NT" to hang our intellectual hats on, newcomers might be confused that Windows 2000 is the next release of Windows 98 (which was the next release of Windows 95), when they are really quite different. What would have been so bad about calling it Windows NT 2000?

Even this is not toooo bad, we could have muddled through calling the desktop version "Windows 2000 workstation". At least we would have had the word "workstation" to help us differentiate between the Windows 95/98 line and the Windows NT line and it is a bit easier on the tongue than "Windows NT 2000 workstation".

But no. Someone decided that the low-end, personal desktop version of Windows 2000 be dubbed the "Professional" version, leaving us with the shipping name of Windows 2000 Professional. Sounds more like a person than an operation system. What amazes me about this is that every single Microsoft employee, no doubt, used Office 97 every day for years. With Office 97, the "Professional" version was the top of the line. Despite this, somebody thought that calling the bottom of the line version of Windows 2000 "Professional" was a good idea. And this persons boss OK'd it.

You could not make things more confusing if you tried. In summary:

After years of being conditioned that the moniker "Professional" meant the top of the line, now it means the bottom of the line
We have no remnants of the NT names, no "NT" and no "workstation"
We lost the continuity of version/release from 3.5 to 3.51 to 4.0 to 2000

Perhaps the most disappointing fact is that people got paid lots of money to make these decisions.
Updated January 21, 2000. Created: July, 1999

High End Server Names

Back in the days of Windows NT4, the high end edition of NT4 server was called the "Enterprise Edition" (it did clustering). When Windows 2000 Server came along, the high end edition was renamed to "Advanced Server". When Windows 2003 Server was introduced, the high end edition was renamed again, this time back to "Enterprise Edition". August 2004.

A bug fix by another name

January 2000. With Windows NT bug fixes are grouped up into clumps called Service Packs. With Microsoft Office (at least with Office 97), bug fixes are grouped up into clumps called Service Releases. Doesn't it occur to the marketing department that two names for the same thing is a bad idea?

Also, with Windows NT, Service Packs are cumulative; that is, each one includes all the bug fixes in the earlier ones. This is convenient, as it allows you to go from Service Pack 3 to Service Pack 6 without having to round up and apply the intermediate Service Packs. With Microsoft Office, of course, the opposite is true. The Office 97 Service Release 1 must be applied before the Service Release 2 can be applied.

Windows software by any other name? a story by CNet. February 2, 2001. What's in a name? A lot of confusion, at least for Microsoft. Quoting from the story: "With its next-generation Windows and Office products, Microsoft is expected to adopt a new and untried naming convention..." The article also mentions that Windows Me had to be called that because the name Windows 2000 was already taken.

NT class versions of Windows

If you are like me, you need a cheat sheet:

Windows 2000 is really Windows NT 5.0
Windows XP is really Windows NT 5.1
The server version of Windows released in April 2003 is really Windows NT 5.2.
It is called Windows Server 2003. During its gestation period, it was referred to as Windows NT 6.0, Whistler (the initial code name), Windows 2002 Server, Windows .Net Server and .Net Server 2003. Sunbelt Software refers to it as "W2K3".
The name Windows Me was chosen because the name Windows 2000 was already taken by the NT family of Windows. Following up on Windows 95, 98 and 98 Second Edition, the logical name for the next edition would have been Windows 2000, named after the year it was released. However, there were two groups at Microsoft developing different versions of Windows and they probably had different marketing departments and never spoke to each other. The NT folks should have called their version of Windows that was released in 2000, Windows NT 5. But no, they called it Windows 2000, denying the name to Windows 9x folks who had to come up with the fudge name of Windows Millennium Edition, which is often referred to as Windows Me. (revised)
What everyone calls Windows NT is really Windows NT 4.0. Either people are too lazy to say "4.0" or everyone alive on earth was born after 1996 when some of used to run NT version 3.5x.
Windows NT was actually born at version 3.1. There was no 1.0 or 2.0 or 3.0. According to this page, the version number was chosen because the user interface was a clone of the then current Windows 3.1. It also "one upped" OS/2 version 2.1 that was shipping at the time. Then too, it might have been a tradition at Microsoft handed down from the 16 bit version of Windows which, practically speaking, was also born at version 3.

April 19, 2003. SunBelt software reports in their W2Knews Newsletter: "Looks like -all- of the new server stuff is going to be called the Windows Server System . . . It's a new positioning they are now going for, seemingly, since the whole Net thing has been a complete disaster. Nobody understood what that really meant. The Windows Server System name will now serve as the umbrella term for server-based Microsoft products including SQL Server, Exchange, BizTalk, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, Project, Host Integration Server, Real-Time Communications Server, Internet Security & Acceleration Server, Systems Management Server, Microsoft Operations Manager and Application Center."
Can't tell your software without a scorecard.

(created April 16, 2002. Updated August 5, 2002, October 21, 2002, January 10, 2002, April 19, 2003, January 22, 2004)

OLE

OLE was originally designed for creating compound documents in Microsoft Office. The second release was called OLE2 and introduced COM which was not focused on compound documents at all, but was a general way for one program to provide services to another program. Fine.

But what to call this general infrastructure technology? They chose OLE! The marketing folks decided that OLE was no longer an acronym. Everything that used COM was branded as OLE and they tried to get everyone to no longer think of OLE as a thing tied to compound documents.

Then they changed names again (this is 1996). Now this stuff was called ActiveX and OLE again referred back to compound documents. ActiveX referred to a set of COM technologies.

Other Gripers

Yoda would be proud of the Office team by Ed Bott May 23, 2006. Instead of calling it Office 2007, Microsoft's overpaid marketing department is trying to get everyone to call it "the 2007 Microsoft Office system".

Speaking of product names. Hackles.org ran a strip about the subject on July 29, 2002.

The .NET name has also been a mistake. Microsoft reels in its .Net tag January 9, 2003. San Jose Mercury News. By Kristi Heim. Microsoft will drop the .Net term from products because it was too confusing. Quoting: "The software giant unveiled the term with great fanfare in 2000, as it launched a strategy and technology platform to offer software and services over the Web. But the .Net tag left many people scratching their heads. While Microsoft continued to add the .Net suffix to products from developer tools to servers, it has struggled to explain what the term means."

What's the difference between MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, and Windows Messenger? September 16, 2003.

Page last updated: May 25, 2006