INQUIRER Top 10 Greatest Ever Technology Names

NOW THAT Windows Server 2008 has been officially named, the codename Longhorn will retreat to being just another future slab of steak, one more leather jacket.

That’s a shame because Longhorn is an outstanding name. It’s evocative, American, masculine, muscular, traditional, rural. It’s a name that communicates with the solar plexus like Sibelius’s second or the sudden glimpse of a mountain when mist clears.

Unlike Windows Server 2008, although to be fair to Microsoft, it recognises its essential dullness in a mockumentary video.

Why do companies ditch these powerful codenames? It’s a shame because there have been some corkers, so let’s recall them as part of our Top 10 Greatest Ever Technology Names.

10. Compaq’s Wildfire. Wildfire was the codename for a range of Alpha-based servers. Good name, except for INQUIRER founder Mike Magee, who, in another plaice, was on the receiving end of a cease-and-desist letter from Messrs. Sue, Grabbit and Run suggesting the moniker could wreak havoc with a similarly named brand.

9. IBM’s Butterfly. Think of the butterfly, a delicate, silken-winged haunter of English country gardens. A lovely name for lovely notebook PC and apt too, as it evoked the keyboard that would open out when the screen was lifted. But IBM decided to call the shipping product the ThinkPad 701C and the product didn’t sell. However, so beloved by connoisseurs was the Butterfly, that a kaleidoscope of web sites pays tribute to the ill-fated, tragic even, one-season wonder.

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