5 ms·

You're better off skipping every other version of Windows and it seems to still hold true.. Windows NT good Windows 98 bad Windows 2000 good Windows Me bad

You're better off skipping every other version of Windows and it seems to still hold true.. Windows NT good Windows 98 bad Windows 2000 good Windows Me bad Windows XP good Windows Vista bad Windows 7 good Windows 8 bad Windows 10 good Windows 11 bad

tssva 5y ago
This listing makes no sense. Some of these operating systems were targeted at completely different markets and shouldn't be lumped together. Also you have lumped all the versions of Windows NT together as one operating system when there were 4 different versions of Windows NT. Windows 95 came after 3 of those versions had been released but doesn't appear on this list at all. Also Windows 98 is not generally considered a bad operating system for the time.
- dncornholio 5y ago
  I lumped them together according to Microsoft versioning. I only named the Windows i've used as a consumer (hence no 2003). Following just the initial release of the major versions it holds. I know 8.1 is a completely different OS to 8, but according to Microsoft it's not :) Most Windows were fixed later though with service packs etc. So this list should be taken with a grain of salt of course
pitdicker 5y ago
Making generalized statements and lists like this is only possible if you selectively ignore versions. From the Windows 3.11 to Windows ME/2000 era there where the DOS and NT kernel editions, both available at the same time. I believe the missing Windows 98 SE was generally considered good, and the version many people kept using while XP was popular. XP was not considered good at first, but had substantial improvements in SP2 and SP3. Windows 8.1 didn't leave much of an impression, but was pretty workable.
danielheath 5y ago
Where does 95 / 98se fit into that? (more seriously, iirc NT/2k were a substantially different codebase which got merged with the 95/98/me line to produce XP)
dijit 5y ago
Argh, I hate to nerdsnipe like this: Windows 3.0 Good (and made windows commercially successful) Windows 3.1 Good Windows 95 Good Windows 98 Bad Windows 98SE Good Windows ME Very Bad (they removed DOS mode for god sake!) Windows 2000 Good Windows XP Good Windows Vista Bad Windows 7 Good Windows 8 Bad Windows 8.1 Mixed Windows 10 Good Windows 11 Bad Seems very tick-tocky but there are exceptions.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Seems like a cherry pick. Was the difference between 98 and 98SE larger than between XP and XP SP and SP2 which are not included?
  - dijit 5y ago
    You needed an upgrade CD ordered from Microsoft to update, so I count those. if 98SE was a service pack it would be the largest feature increase in a service pack of any Windows service pack, iirc it brought native USB printer+storage support and firewire support to the OS. Though I was a kid at the time (barely 10 years old), I just remember 98 and 98SE disks floating about and people not upgrading their windows 95 machines until SE came out.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    I always jokingly called windows 7 vista service pack 3. Vista added in windows defender, really ramped up how aggressive superfetch was, and search indexing. Turn those 3 things off and vista worked decently as it was too much for most CPUs/HD of the time. They fixed most of that in sp2 of vista. But win7 is when everyone really got most of the fixes. One dude I know managed to 'fix' Windows ME. He figured out it was the plug and play system aggressively scanning the inf files. He narrowed them down to just the ones that were needed for his hardware and it worked pretty good for him.
  - jillesvangurp 5y ago
    The wisdom used to be to wait a couple of service packs before installing a new version of windows. It seems that is still true. Windows 2000 was quite usable a few service packs in. Windows XP took a few as well to become usable. ME was the last version of the Dos based windows versions. Versions 1 and 2 most people barely remember. Version 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 were pretty close together and the first versions that were more widely used. Then windows 95 was obviously the big one in that series but quite buggy as well initially thus necessitating service packs. 98 and 98SE were relatively minor upgrades to that and thus quite alright. ME was an attempt to bridge the gap to the much delayed XP and as such quite pointless since it was buggy and would have also included a lot of misguided stuff around internet explorer that has since been long forgotten and that obviously was omitted for XP. Somehow MS got into their heads that the browser was the OS, which in MS land meant stuff like active desktop, which as I recall was horribly slow even if you could get to run it at all (no in my case). And when you did there was a "and now what ... " moment as well. XP was the successor to Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, and 2000 Each of which were pretty OK. To complicate things further they started doing separate releases for servers as well from 3.1. I use NT 3.1 for development work at some point. Pretty nice machine as I remember. Never gave me much trouble. XP was where they cut loose from DOS mostly and by then nobody, including MS, had appetite for yet more releases. So, they doubled down with service packs and fixed bugs only for quite a few years. Nevertheless, in terms of stability XP was a huge upgrade from the dos based varieties in terms of stability which is why people remember it fondly. But especially before service pack 2, many people were sticking with windows 2000 in companies. I had a nice windows 2000 desktop for quite some time at work. By the time they released Vista, it was so horrible that many opted to not upgrade since there was no big need. Especially enterprises said thanks but no thanks and kept on defaulting to XP right until MS pulled the plug on that many years later. They had the same issue with windows 7 and 8. Which is why they made windows 10 a longer term thing and made an effort to get companies upgrading. I predict that this will be an issue with windows 11 as well. Most enterprises like uniform environments and they don't want to have to support multiple versions of windows. So, windows 10 is going to be here for a while.
throwawaycuriou 5y ago
Unfortunately modern Windows is a goodbad pile of everything that came before. You still have to hack the registry for certain problems.
thought_alarm 5y ago
Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 1, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a, less bad
- tssva 5y ago
  You are leaving out Windows NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51.
  - nkssy 5y ago
    Thats probably for the best.
richthegeek 5y ago
Windows 10 is only good compared to Windows 8. The terrible product decisions are all still there, if slightly more hidden.
pram 5y ago
You dare smear the good name of Windows 98 sir?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
marginalia_nu 5y ago
Windows 10 has steadily gotten worse. I booted into Windows for the first time in a while a few days ago. I was reminded that last time I logged out I was forced to install an upgrade. I was met with a screen forcing me to connect my user account with my Microsoft account. No way out of the process. I didn't know the password to my Microsoft account since I never use it for anything. I couldn't reset the password because my computer was locked and demanding a Microsoft account. I don't have any email access on my phone because it's so hard to secure. Had to shut down the computer and boot into Debian to reset my Microsoft password. Then I booted back into Windows, signed in, went into the control panel and signed out again. What the actual fuck. Who thought this process was a good idea?

tssva 5y ago

This listing makes no sense. Some of these operating systems were targeted at completely different markets and shouldn't be lumped together. Also you have lumped all the versions of Windows NT together as one operating system when there were 4 different versions of Windows NT. Windows 95 came after 3 of those versions had been released but doesn't appear on this list at all. Also Windows 98 is not generally considered a bad operating system for the time.

dncornholio 5y ago
I lumped them together according to Microsoft versioning. I only named the Windows i've used as a consumer (hence no 2003). Following just the initial release of the major versions it holds. I know 8.1 is a completely different OS to 8, but according to Microsoft it's not :) Most Windows were fixed later though with service packs etc. So this list should be taken with a grain of salt of course

pitdicker 5y ago

Making generalized statements and lists like this is only possible if you selectively ignore versions. From the Windows 3.11 to Windows ME/2000 era there where the DOS and NT kernel editions, both available at the same time. I believe the missing Windows 98 SE was generally considered good, and the version many people kept using while XP was popular. XP was not considered good at first, but had substantial improvements in SP2 and SP3. Windows 8.1 didn't leave much of an impression, but was pretty workable.

danielheath 5y ago

Where does 95 / 98se fit into that? (more seriously, iirc NT/2k were a substantially different codebase which got merged with the 95/98/me line to produce XP)

dijit 5y ago

Argh, I hate to nerdsnipe like this: Windows 3.0 Good (and made windows commercially successful) Windows 3.1 Good Windows 95 Good Windows 98 Bad Windows 98SE Good Windows ME Very Bad (they removed DOS mode for god sake!) Windows 2000 Good Windows XP Good Windows Vista Bad Windows 7 Good Windows 8 Bad Windows 8.1 Mixed Windows 10 Good Windows 11 Bad Seems very tick-tocky but there are exceptions.

Tenoke 5y ago
Seems like a cherry pick. Was the difference between 98 and 98SE larger than between XP and XP SP and SP2 which are not included?
- dijit 5y ago
  You needed an upgrade CD ordered from Microsoft to update, so I count those. if 98SE was a service pack it would be the largest feature increase in a service pack of any Windows service pack, iirc it brought native USB printer+storage support and firewire support to the OS. Though I was a kid at the time (barely 10 years old), I just remember 98 and 98SE disks floating about and people not upgrading their windows 95 machines until SE came out.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  I always jokingly called windows 7 vista service pack 3. Vista added in windows defender, really ramped up how aggressive superfetch was, and search indexing. Turn those 3 things off and vista worked decently as it was too much for most CPUs/HD of the time. They fixed most of that in sp2 of vista. But win7 is when everyone really got most of the fixes. One dude I know managed to 'fix' Windows ME. He figured out it was the plug and play system aggressively scanning the inf files. He narrowed them down to just the ones that were needed for his hardware and it worked pretty good for him.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  The wisdom used to be to wait a couple of service packs before installing a new version of windows. It seems that is still true. Windows 2000 was quite usable a few service packs in. Windows XP took a few as well to become usable. ME was the last version of the Dos based windows versions. Versions 1 and 2 most people barely remember. Version 3.0, 3.1 and 3.11 were pretty close together and the first versions that were more widely used. Then windows 95 was obviously the big one in that series but quite buggy as well initially thus necessitating service packs. 98 and 98SE were relatively minor upgrades to that and thus quite alright. ME was an attempt to bridge the gap to the much delayed XP and as such quite pointless since it was buggy and would have also included a lot of misguided stuff around internet explorer that has since been long forgotten and that obviously was omitted for XP. Somehow MS got into their heads that the browser was the OS, which in MS land meant stuff like active desktop, which as I recall was horribly slow even if you could get to run it at all (no in my case). And when you did there was a "and now what ... " moment as well. XP was the successor to Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, and 2000 Each of which were pretty OK. To complicate things further they started doing separate releases for servers as well from 3.1. I use NT 3.1 for development work at some point. Pretty nice machine as I remember. Never gave me much trouble. XP was where they cut loose from DOS mostly and by then nobody, including MS, had appetite for yet more releases. So, they doubled down with service packs and fixed bugs only for quite a few years. Nevertheless, in terms of stability XP was a huge upgrade from the dos based varieties in terms of stability which is why people remember it fondly. But especially before service pack 2, many people were sticking with windows 2000 in companies. I had a nice windows 2000 desktop for quite some time at work. By the time they released Vista, it was so horrible that many opted to not upgrade since there was no big need. Especially enterprises said thanks but no thanks and kept on defaulting to XP right until MS pulled the plug on that many years later. They had the same issue with windows 7 and 8. Which is why they made windows 10 a longer term thing and made an effort to get companies upgrading. I predict that this will be an issue with windows 11 as well. Most enterprises like uniform environments and they don't want to have to support multiple versions of windows. So, windows 10 is going to be here for a while.

throwawaycuriou 5y ago

Unfortunately modern Windows is a goodbad pile of everything that came before. You still have to hack the registry for certain problems.

thought_alarm 5y ago

Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 1, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 2, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5, good Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6, bad Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a, less bad

tssva 5y ago
You are leaving out Windows NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51.
- nkssy 5y ago
  Thats probably for the best.

richthegeek 5y ago

Windows 10 is only good compared to Windows 8. The terrible product decisions are all still there, if slightly more hidden.

pram 5y ago

You dare smear the good name of Windows 98 sir?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

marginalia_nu 5y ago

Windows 10 has steadily gotten worse. I booted into Windows for the first time in a while a few days ago. I was reminded that last time I logged out I was forced to install an upgrade. I was met with a screen forcing me to connect my user account with my Microsoft account. No way out of the process. I didn't know the password to my Microsoft account since I never use it for anything. I couldn't reset the password because my computer was locked and demanding a Microsoft account. I don't have any email access on my phone because it's so hard to secure. Had to shut down the computer and boot into Debian to reset my Microsoft password. Then I booted back into Windows, signed in, went into the control panel and signed out again. What the actual fuck. Who thought this process was a good idea?