5 ms·

Yup. When saying "XP was great", people mean "XP SP2 and on" - for me, the move from W2k to WXP was "the same thing, now with Fischer-Price aesthetic!"

christophilus 6y ago
> Fischer-Price aesthetic That is the perfect description. It’s one of the ugliest UIs I’ve ever experienced.
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  XP also shipped with the 2000 skin and it was trivially easy to switch over.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Yep. Even switched it over when you went to the lower resources usage settings.
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    It was easy to switch but there is a lot to be said for sane defaults. With each new iteration of Windows I'd find more and more insane defaults (for me at least). It started with file extensions being hidden by default. Then system files too. By the time XP was released I was finding that I had to spend an hour just configuring the system how I liked...and that was before I installed any software. Users will sometimes reach a point where they say "If I'm having to spend this much time configuring new installs to function how I like, then I might as well install something else that already ships with the defaults I like". And this is why many power users started drifting away from Windows in the decade of 2000 to 2010.
    - james-skemp 6y ago
      Windows Server having file extensions turned off by default still drives me crazy. I get it for the desktop versions, but it would be fantastic if server editions had it on, or it saved and picked up the toggle from your AD account/profile.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I agree generally about the importance of sane defaults, but the theme was just soooo damn easy to switch, and a lot of non-techy people I know did so. I actually don’t really associate Windows XP with its theme in my memory, because I so rarely saw it in use.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  People said that (as well as Skittles OS) since it launched.
- skee0083 6y ago
  I have to stick up for XP because i have so many fond memories from my young adulthood of using it. I never had a problem with it's default theme but it also shipped with a few other themes that were better. like olive and then later the zune theme which was arguably the best one.
JohnBooty 6y ago
I say this as somebody who really enjoyed W2K, but the complaints about WinXP's default theme are very difficult to understand when: - The classic theme was just a few clicks away - Of all the problems with XP, I would not even list the "easily changed default theme" in the top.... 100 or so. I would not expect to see such sentiment on HN, of all places.
- virtue3 6y ago
  Hey man, let people complain about what color the bike shed was painted. XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options. It was pretty stable. You could change network settings without restarting. It was built on the NT core instead of whatever 95/98/ME hot mess was. The main issue was it's exposure to viruses. Which was address in 8+ (windows actually started acting more like linux with regards to user/admin). Windows7 IMHO had the best ui out of the box. 10 grew on me. Let's just not talk about 8.
  - hnlmorg 6y ago
    > XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options. That's more true of Windows 2000 though. By the time XP was released Apple had released a few iterations of OS X and it was looking pretty decent. Not to mention desktop Linux becoming stable. Neither of which were true in 2000. In fact with Windows 2000, I used to dual boot Win 95, Linux Slackware and BeOS 5 but I always came back to Windows 2k for day to day work. Then when Windows XP was released I gave it a try and got so fed up with it that rather than installing Win2k again I just switched to Linux full time instead (sadly BeOS had ceased development by that point).
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  The look was superficial, sure: For someone moving from Win2K to XP, this was not the main frustration, but a easily recognizable sign for the myriad other issues (note: original XP, XPsp2 was the release that should have been). (We did some printing. In the range of 1M pages/workstation. It...worked...on XP. Eventually.)

christophilus 6y ago

> Fischer-Price aesthetic That is the perfect description. It’s one of the ugliest UIs I’ve ever experienced.

i_am_proteus 6y ago
XP also shipped with the 2000 skin and it was trivially easy to switch over.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Yep. Even switched it over when you went to the lower resources usage settings.
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  It was easy to switch but there is a lot to be said for sane defaults. With each new iteration of Windows I'd find more and more insane defaults (for me at least). It started with file extensions being hidden by default. Then system files too. By the time XP was released I was finding that I had to spend an hour just configuring the system how I liked...and that was before I installed any software. Users will sometimes reach a point where they say "If I'm having to spend this much time configuring new installs to function how I like, then I might as well install something else that already ships with the defaults I like". And this is why many power users started drifting away from Windows in the decade of 2000 to 2010.
  - james-skemp 6y ago
    Windows Server having file extensions turned off by default still drives me crazy. I get it for the desktop versions, but it would be fantastic if server editions had it on, or it saved and picked up the toggle from your AD account/profile.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I agree generally about the importance of sane defaults, but the theme was just soooo damn easy to switch, and a lot of non-techy people I know did so. I actually don’t really associate Windows XP with its theme in my memory, because I so rarely saw it in use.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
People said that (as well as Skittles OS) since it launched.
skee0083 6y ago
I have to stick up for XP because i have so many fond memories from my young adulthood of using it. I never had a problem with it's default theme but it also shipped with a few other themes that were better. like olive and then later the zune theme which was arguably the best one.

JohnBooty 6y ago

I say this as somebody who really enjoyed W2K, but the complaints about WinXP's default theme are very difficult to understand when: - The classic theme was just a few clicks away - Of all the problems with XP, I would not even list the "easily changed default theme" in the top.... 100 or so. I would not expect to see such sentiment on HN, of all places.

virtue3 6y ago
Hey man, let people complain about what color the bike shed was painted. XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options. It was pretty stable. You could change network settings without restarting. It was built on the NT core instead of whatever 95/98/ME hot mess was. The main issue was it's exposure to viruses. Which was address in 8+ (windows actually started acting more like linux with regards to user/admin). Windows7 IMHO had the best ui out of the box. 10 grew on me. Let's just not talk about 8.
- hnlmorg 6y ago
  > XP was a pretty damn good OS that came out of a time when there wasn't a lot of options. That's more true of Windows 2000 though. By the time XP was released Apple had released a few iterations of OS X and it was looking pretty decent. Not to mention desktop Linux becoming stable. Neither of which were true in 2000. In fact with Windows 2000, I used to dual boot Win 95, Linux Slackware and BeOS 5 but I always came back to Windows 2k for day to day work. Then when Windows XP was released I gave it a try and got so fed up with it that rather than installing Win2k again I just switched to Linux full time instead (sadly BeOS had ceased development by that point).
Piskvorrr 6y ago
The look was superficial, sure: For someone moving from Win2K to XP, this was not the main frustration, but a easily recognizable sign for the myriad other issues (note: original XP, XPsp2 was the release that should have been). (We did some printing. In the range of 1M pages/workstation. It...worked...on XP. Eventually.)