This could be much more interesting if it included shots of the various windows listed in the panel, and perhaps also the ‘advanced’ interfaces available since

This could be much more interesting if it included shots of the various windows listed in the panel, and perhaps also the ‘advanced’ interfaces available since Win2000 (iirc)—opened via ‘properties’ on the ‘My computer’ icon, though I think it's also in the panel somewhere. For me, the control panel is the litmus test of the OS interface—partly because usually it's where the OS has the most of its interface, while the rest is a bunch of bars and menus. Compare e.g. Gnome's panel to KDE's panel, at least around KDE 4 (last I've tried it): Gnome's is an example of austerity lifted from OSX, while KDE went full-in on tree-lists of dozens of pages of settings. So: in Windows 7's control panel I've counted ten different kinds of windows—with ten somewhat different approaches to their design. Some of the widgets in there aren't used anywhere else in the OS. This only includes MS' own built-in settings windows—no third-party stuff, which frequently also has custom one-off looks and widgets. And apparently, things became even worse in Win 8 or 10, with half-assed attempts at a redesign.