Vista brand is alive. The New York Times may be wrong

Last Tuesday's edition of the NYT claimed, in an article reviewing the pre-release of Windows 7, that Microsot "unceremoniously [dropped] the brand name Vista for the new product" only to add in the second paragraph that "the new version will instead be branded Windows 7..." All right, let's see. First of all, is debatable to say that Microsoft "ended" the Vista brand, when it is alive and kicking and will continue to be around for some years to come (look, for instance, at Windows XP). Brands are not dropped, they evolve. Vista is just a step in the Windows saga and a new OS architecture on which the future versions of Windows will most likely be based. So I would have to disagree with the NYT. Secondly, the new version will not "instead" be branded Windows 7, rather the new version is the next logical and consecutive version of this OS. Check the chart above. It shows the MAJOR Windows versions, and milestones. Note that XP does not appear, since it is simply an enhancement to 2000 and as such it was marked as version 5.1.2600. Now, whether Windows 7 is just an update of Vista is just another issue.