Re: Beached
I could be wrong but I think you'll find that Windows 2000 uses version 5 windows kernel (build 5.0.3700.6690 for example), and XP is essentially a modified version of this kernel (build 5.1.2600.5512 for example). Vista is a newer version 6 kernel (build 6.0.6002.16497 for example) and obviously they are now moving onto version 7. Whether it has any relation to Vista, like XP does to 2000, is anybody's guess, but they won't want that association so will move to version 7 either way.
For reference, ME is version 4 for some reason.