A client asked me today what the ‘N’ stands for on some edition of Microsoft Windows 7 (‘N’ Editions actually go right back to XP).
In a nutshell, the ‘N’ stands for ‘Avoid’.
In 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft nearly €500million for Anti-competitive Practices relating to the bundling of Windows Media Player with the Windows Operating System. Microsoft could continue to bundle Media Player, but they had to offer a version without it and these are the ‘N’ editions of Windows. For the most part, everything else is identical.
