[python-win32] Is there a _simple_ way to find out what version of Windows you are running?

[Laura Creighton]

Hi, I am one of the python.org webmasters.  We get people -- often children
who want to install python on their computers but don't know what OS they
are running.  Nearly all of these people are running Windows, though I
did get somebody who was running FreeBSD the other day. :)

Microsoft tells you to do this:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/which-operating-system

This is asking an awful lot of the people who are mailing webmaster
and who don't know what OS they are running.  It is futile to tell
these people methods to find out what OS version they are running that vary
depending on what OS you have, so  I am looking for a thing you can do on
any version of windows which will reliably spit out the correct
answer.

something along the lines of the windows XP discovery:

    Click the Start button, click Run, type winver, and then press Enter.

looks good.  Perhaps it has to be:
open a command window (but do you do the same thing to do that on all
windows versions?) and type winver

Now that page, of course, supposedly tells you what version you are
running if you connect to it over the internet with the machine you 
want to test.  But not having a windows system or 12 to test with,
I am not sure what the results are, and whether that will in itself
be good enough for people who just want to learn how to get Python.

thanks very much,
Laura