What’s in a name?

I almost off-handedly mentioned last week that Microsoft had again renamed the successor to Windows 2000 Server as “Windows Server 2003” and offered the shorthand version as Win2K+3 until someone comes up with a better moniker. Evidently, you all took that as a challenge.

My inbox filled up with all sorts of short names for the new operating system – some of which can’t even be repeated in polite company. My favorite, and the one I’ll use, is “Win2K3,” first suggested by Lars Polheimer from Switzerland’s PC Net. Thanks Lars.

What really surprised me, though, was the large volume of suggestions to use “Windows 3,” “WinServer 3,” “Win03” or some other variant including “Win” and “3.” More surprisingly, only one correspondent thought there might be some confusion with the old 16-bit desktop GUI called Windows 3.0 (also 3.1 and 3.11).

But there are still enterprises using Windows 3.x on their networks. Admittedly, most shops that still have Windows 3.x machines need only one to run the no-longer-being-developed application that just won’t work in the 32-bit environment of Windows 9.x/ME/XP/2K. There are even a handful of places that consider the Windows 3.x platform their “bleeding edge” machines even though most desktops in those organization still run MS-DOS 3.x, 4.x or perhaps 5.x. So, we can’t dismiss Windows 3.x as some forgotten, arcane operating system suitable only for a museum.

My first network operating system, back in 1986, was Novell NetWare 4.61 (the desktops were running MS-DOS 2.1). In 1987, Novell introduces Advanced NetWare 1.0, but by 2.0 the word “advanced” had been dropped (just as Microsoft dropped the “NT” designation) and subsequent versions were called, simply, NetWare (except, of course, for the brief – but not brief enough – version called “IntraNetWare”). So in 1994, many people were struggling to install the new NetWare 4.0 with directory services.

I’m often asked about my background in networking, and when I mention starting with NetWare 4.61 in 1986, the frequent reaction is: a) Novell released a 4.0, 4.01, 4.1 and 4.2 version only; and 2) NetWare 4 wasn’t released until 1994. This leads to much time wasting as we sort out the various misunderstandings.

So I strongly suggest you do not refer to the upcoming server operating system as Windows 3 unless you want to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining exactly what you mean. Since the purpose of a shorthand name is to save time, not increase the time you spend explaining something, I’m going to stick to Win2K3 (or Win2003 if you’re really, really sick of the “2K” references) for the foreseeable future.