Was there ever a Windows 4.0? I’ve tried looking this up, but everytime I search on “Windows 4.0” I get hits for “WindowsNT 4.0”. We have someone in the office that claims that they remember Windows 4.0…
I don’t remember what came before Windows95
Warning, all this is from the top of my head and from my personal use and experience.
There were versions of Windows starting at 1.0, but it didn’t really get anywhere until version 3.0, where I started using it, and then 3.1, Windows for Workgroups.
After that, they started on Windows NT, which were focused on the workplace, putting stability above ease of use/administration. These were numbered 3.1, then 3.5, and 3.51. Once again, didn’t really get it right until a later version, in this case 4.0, and not in that version until Service Pack 4 or 5.
Then came the newfangled Windows versions, starting with 95, and progressing through 95 OSR2, 98, 98se. These still had old 16-bit DOS code in them, and were less than stable, but were easy to use/maintain if you didn’t mind re-installing every 6 months or so.
Then came 2000, which is based off the NT core, thusly called NT 5.0. More stable and easier to use than NT, but still more difficult than the 9x core. Later came ME(Millennium Edition), which was still off of the 9x core, and finally XP, which merged 9x and NT lines, making a stable release with ease of use, and called NT 5.1.
Google for “windows history” gives me
which has more release dates and versions. Hope this helped.
Windows 3.1 immediately preceded Windows 95.
Windows 4.0 is Windows’ internal identification for Windows 95. If you right-click on “My Computer,” and select “Properties”, you should get a property window which says, amongst other things, what version number of Windows you have. If you have Windows 95 or NT 4.0, that line in the Property window will say 4.0 or something similar. Windows 2000 says 5.0 (with some other digits after the decimal as well). XP, I’d guess, is 6.0.
Don’t forget, there was also a Windows 3.11
5.1 XP is only a small evolutionary step, nothing huge.
Lest anyone think Keeve’s being really picky, Windows 3.11 (really, 3.1.1) was a significant release – it was “Windows for Workgroups.” Since this is the earliest Windows I’ve personally had the damnation to use, I don’t know what the Windows without Workgroups was. I suppose it lacked the networking abilities of the 3.11 release.
Right. That’s what “work groups” means. Peer-peer networking support.
My guess is your co-worker was remembering the Properties dialog from Windows 95, as cmkeller said.
[nitpick]
Not exactly. The reason shipping copies of Win95 refer to it as 4.0 in the Properties dialog is b/c that dialog had already gone through visual freeze for NT 4.0, so it wasn’t changed in time to reflect the much-later-marketing-designated label of “Windows 95”.
The internal identification of Windows 95 was “Chicago”.
[/nitpick]
Dooku, when I said “internal identification”, I mean how the computer sees it. “Chicago” was Microsoft’s internal code-name for the project that was released under the name “Windows 95”, but if you (as a programmer) use the Windows API function “GetVersion” or “GetVersionEx”, it will tell you “Major version 4, minor version 0 (or whatever)” if you’re using Winodws 95, “Major Version 5, etc” if you’re using Windows 2000.
It has nothing to do with not changing the appearance of the properties window. In all versions up through XP, the property window will still tell you the numeric version.
And thanks to all for the reminder about Windows 3.11. Guess I muffed that one.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Well, yeah. I guess what I meant is, the earlier 3.1 release didn’t have any networking support? – that’s what I was “supposing.” The word “workgroup” sounds so office-like. I’ve had peer-to-peer networked Macs since the 80s, without any talk of “workgroups.” It was just a network (admittedly a slow, 128Kbps AppleTalk network)! It’s just assumed that networking is built into an OS.
In reality, Windows 3.1 and earlier were kinda-sorta able to network. That’s where Novell came from, originally. Real mode (“loaded before Windows”) networking drivers would allow mapping to drive letters such that Windows wouldn’t know the difference. Actually, real-mode drivers still work, at least up through Win 98.
Early copies of Windows 95 didn’t display “95” in the Properties dialog at all - it just read:
System:
Microsoft Windows
4.00.xxxx
Later versions actually included:
System:
Microsoft Windows 95
4.00.xxxx
So, the co-worker may have remembered a really early copy of Win95. Or, they may have been clueless the whole time - a classic “One-D-Ten-T” problem, as we used to say in Support. 
Re: “Internal” - cmkeller, sorry, I misunderstood you - we are both talking about the same thing. (I guess “internal” to me only means what MS calls it in-house).
Windows 98 identifies itself in FileMaker’s Status(CurrentSystemVersion) as 4.1; Windows 95 as 4.0; I haven’t seen ME on any box at work yet.
MacOS X is the one that threw me for a loop: under the hood, so to speak, it thinks of itself as version 16.0.0.3 (that was the OS we knew and suffered through as 10.0.0.3) or 16.0.1 (the relatively new 10.1 release) or, presumably, 16.0.1.1 (just read about it today). I understand where Microsoft got Windows 4 for 95 (definitely a major version number above 3.11) and 4.1 for 98 (definitely a minor version number above 95). Where the heck did Apple and/or NeXT ratchet their way up to System Version 16, though? Are they counting BSD Unix cores here?
Shouldn’t have anything to do with the BSD Unix cores, 'cos it’s not “BSD” in reality. It’s “Darwin” (version 5 or something?), which is some hybrid between Mach Kernal but BSD Unix (it’s not completely either one).
Where did you see the version 16 whatever? In the System Profiler?
The user interface part seems to be using arcane “build numbers” (45K4 or some gibberish) instead of real version numbers.
Ach! I’m no longer the master of my Mac! I feel like a Windows user now!