Microsoft has announced a new codename for the Windows OS that will follow the yet-to-ship Vista: "Vienna."
The previous codename for the operating system, Blackcomb, was taken from a Canadian ski resort, but has now been dropped in favor of a name inspired by the altogether grander capital of Austria.
The tradition of using place names is long-established at Microsoft. Previous operating systems stretching back to the late 1980s have used the development monikers Sparta (Windows for Workgroups 3.1), Daytona (Windows NT 3.5), Cairo (Windows NT 4.0), Chicago (Windows 95), and Memphis ( Windows 98).
More recently, the company briefly broke with the grand-city tradition when it used the Whistler ski resort in Canada as its codename for Windows XP, following this with Longhorn--a nearby ski bar--for what became Vista.
Every product now has a place name code at Microsoft, most of which are never used by anyone outside the software community. Curiously, Vienna is also listed by some Microsoft-watching websites as the codename of Office Live Communication Server 2005.
There is no confirmed timescale for the release of Blackcomb/Vienna, but at least the world knows what to call it until it does arrive.
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