While it might be true that the step from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 was more of an improvement for Windows-users (but not so much for those using OS/2, its mai

While it might be true that the step from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 was more of an improvement for Windows-users (but not so much for those using OS/2, its main contender at that time) the author does seem to view history through rosy glasses. Windows 95, just like its predecessors and its successors Windows 98 and (especially) Windows ME was hampered by it being built on top of MS-DOS, remnants of which would rear their ugly heads in many situations. It was all too easy to bring down the whole system by a single malfunctioning program, Windows itself and especially many third-party drivers were riddled with bugs which would cause it to 'blue-screen', Microsoft's in itself admirable drive for backward compatibility caused many problems from earlier days to linger around. Network security was a mess, it was trivial to bring down whole office farms by sending packets with a few bits in the right positions. The lack of library versioning ('DLL hell') meant that installing program A could stop program B - or even the whole system - from working. On the topic of installing and removing programs, this was still a hit and miss affair with all programs using their own installers, many of which lacked functioning uninstallers, others which left loads of crud around. In short, Windows 95 (and 98, and ME) was a card house built on quicksand. Windows NT 3.x made good on the promise of stability at the cost of performance and resource consumption. Windows NT 4.x improved performance at the cost of stability by moving drivers - which in earlier versions ran in user space - back into kernel space. Windows 2000 was probably the most balanced version, XP coming in second (after removing the Fisher-Price interface that is...). Given that many of the long-standing problems with Windows still have to be fixed I don't see any utility in the later versions, Windows 7 included. For those looking for an operating system to do the 'usual stuff' - internet-related activities, document processing, some multimedia - one of the more polished Linux distributions - Ubuntu, Mint, etc - is a much better choice which will save the user many a frustrating moment. If you need to run Windows-only software wine might be an option, otherwise just run it in a VM using Windows 2000 or XP if possible. Windows on the server has been a no-starter from the beginning, this is not even worth discussing. The only reason for using it is running something like Microsoft Exchange, the question here is whether this is worth the hassle of having a Windows-based server park.