6 ms·
None of Microsoft's operating systems were as good as Windows XP and at least one (8) was a complete disaster, the shock waves from that catastrophe still rumbl
by thriftwy 4y ago
None of Microsoft's operating systems were as good as Windows XP and at least one (8) was a complete disaster, the shock waves from that catastrophe still rumbling around.
By failing to reproduce that success, Microsoft has ceded most of the moral market share to Apple. Though, as a Linux user, every time I see a Mac desktop I can't resist noticing how often would it lock up and display that rotating "busy" mouse cursor in place of what the proud Mac owner actually wanted to do at that moment.
- 12345hn6789 4y agoI've been working professionally using a Mac for 4ish years now. Can count on a single hand the amount of times the cursor is stuck spinning / loading. I have had my fair share of crashes though.
- capableweb 4y ago95 was trash, 98 was gold. XP was great, Vista was trash. 7 was great, 8 was trash. 10 was gold, 11 is trash. Seems Microsoft has to squeeze in at least one bad version between good ones. But never has a new Windows version been made available where people didn't initially hate them at first, XP, 7, and 10 included. It's not until the version after gets released when people really start appreciating what once was.
- thriftwy 4y agoYou have missed Windows ME between XP and 98, which was so awful people don't remember it anymore. For a revolutionary product, Windows 95 wasn't that bad.
- capableweb 4y agoIt wasn't supposed to be an extensive list, plenty of versions are missing, like NT 4 and well, every single version before 95 :)
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoI've heard the pattern phrased: 95 Good, 98 Bad, 98 SE Good, ME Bad, XP Good, Vista Bad, 7 Good, 8 Bad, 10 Good. Counting 98 SE as a separate release does seem like cherry-picking in order to make the pattern work. Then again, you could also say the cycle started with Windows 98 (putting the whole of that release into the good pile), and you'd still have a remarkably consistent pattern across two decades and seven versions of Windows. Honestly makes you wonder if there's some deeper cause related to Microsoft's organizational structure or something.
- p1necone 4y agoAnd then there's 11 which doesn't really feel like a new version at all to me. I use 10 at work and 11 at home and after changing the taskbar settings to put the start button back on the left I don't even notice switching.
- seiferteric 4y agoFor all the rightful hate 11 gets for ads and tracking crap, once you turn it off it feels... fine. I even don't mind the UI look and really like the new window management, but I don't use windows for anything serious anymore, only gaming so maybe there are other issues.
- wkat4242 4y agoYou can't turn off the tracking crap, this is really the biggest problem IMO. Same here by the way, I don't use it for anything but gaming and work for the tracking reason.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>And then there's 11 which doesn't really feel like a new version at all to me. That's because it isn't, Windows 10 and 11 both identify internally as NT10.0. For some context: Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 identified as NT6.0, 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 respectively; Windows 2000 and XP identified as NT5.0 and 5.1 respectively.
- 4y ago
- lawgimenez 4y agoThere’s also Windows 2000, which I think was the worst of all.
- thriftwy 4y agoIt was a server and workstation OS not really suited for consumer desktop.
- zabzonk 4y agoi used it as my daily driver on a sony laptop - worked like a charm.
- Mike_12345 4y agoIt was the first stable Windows OS that could run all the latest games and desktop applications without constantly crashing or needing a periodic reinstall. It was their best desktop OS at the time. XP was just 2000 with an ugly default theme and added bloat.
- mat_epice 4y agoOh wow, I feel exactly the opposite. Windows 2000 was no-nonsense, but all good stuff. The good bones that Windows XP got came straight from Win2k. The only real problem it had was a narrower hardware compatibility profile, but it still wasn’t that bad.
- agent86 4y agoI would personally argue that Windows 2000 wasn't bad, it was just painful in the beginning. It was the transition point from the 9x kernel/setup to the NT kernel/setup and some manufacturers navigated that change better than others in the beginning.
- zabzonk 4y agoit was brilliant - fast and very stable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- asciimov 4y agoI had the one PC in that era that WinME was smooth sailing on. It was a Packard Bell with a 200mhz Pentium 1 (96 mb of ram at the time, i think). For whatever reason, and combination of hardware, ME had no issues running. I had less blue screens on it, and overall found it to be enjoyable and much more stable than 98 and 95c was on that machine.
- Osiris 4y agoME was all the features that eventually went into XP but still based on the Windows 98 kernel instead of NT. What made XP great was how reliable it was compared to previous Windows versions.
- masswerk 4y agoSome things about Win95 are lost to nostalgia, as well. Like broken drivers, esp. in concert with up-to-date office, which came with issues of its own, like broken export formats. (It took more than a year for serious support for Postscript printers, etc.) Win95 became only somewhat functional with Windows 95B. (This one, however, started the IE integration.)
- wkat4242 4y agoAnd broken USB support. Even with OSR3 it didn't quite work with many devices.
- david2ndaccount 4y ago10 was only good in comparison to the versions next to it, it has a lot of the problems like intrusive telemetry and bad UI that plague newer windows.
- CaptainNegative 4y agoWhat do you dislike about 95?
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoIt was really unstable. Some people claim this was mostly due to bad 3rd party drivers and not the OS itself. But even if that's true, from the user perspective it's very hard to tell the difference.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>11 is trash. 11 has all the same problems 10 has, but brings many significant improvements both in the backend and frontend. Hardly trash. >never has a new Windows version been made available where people didn't initially hate them at first Windows 95 and 98 were both received to applause and fanfare, 95's stellar reception in particular is probably still unmatched to this day.
- snozolli 4y ago95's stellar reception in particular is probably still unmatched to this day. The only shift in user experience that I can equate it to is maybe the jump from candy bar and flip phones to the iPhone and Android. In addition to the UI, it brought real multitasking to a consumer OS.
- rkagerer 4y agoWindows 11 cranked up the [user-unwanted] telemetry, mandated TPM 2.0, and eliminated hardware support for certain CPU's for no other reason than 'because security' (overridable with a registry hack at least for the moment).
- kivlad 4y agoInstability aside, Windows 98 marked the point where Internet Explorer leeched itself into the operating system to the point of no return (only to be finally reversed in the past year). The complaints of social media apps being "preinstalled" with Windows 11 seem to echo the channel bar, Active Desktop and everything else that arrived with IE4. I believe that the notion that Windows 98 was good came when IE5 were released and pulled back on some of those integrations, which happened to coincide with the timing of 98 Second Edition. In any case it was by no means great, but it was good enough.
- bakugo 4y ago> 10 was gold, 11 is trash If you think 10 is "gold" and 11 is "trash" I assume you're suffering from some sort of stockholm syndrome from using 10 too long and haven't actually tried 11 yet because it's just a reskinned 10 (and visually, it looks a lot better).
- dragonwriter 4y ago> I assume you’re suffering from some sort of Stockholm syndrome Periodic reminder that “Stockholm Syndrome” was a complete fabrication based on no clinical evidence invented on the spot to discredit an ex-hostage who was making legitimate criticism of an unnecessarily violent police intervention by one of the architects of that intervention, because they had no rational defense. Its invocations in debates are also typically as an attempt at a thought-terminating trope to evoke an emotional response that covers the lack of actual argument, which fits the history of the term well.
- snozolli 4y agohaven't actually tried 11 yet because it's just a reskinned 10 (and visually, it looks a lot better). I've been on 11 since it was released and I find it to be objectively a worse experience. On Win 10, I could game on one screen and stream a video in a browser on the other. On Win 11, I get stuttering on the streamed video. It's also failed to update twice now. I invested hours into debugging the issue the first time. This time it's been days and I'm about to just do a fresh Win 10 install over this nightmare.
- bakugo 4y ago> It's also failed to update twice now. I invested hours into debugging the issue the first time. This time it's been days and I'm about to just do a fresh Win 10 install over this nightmare. My current 11 install has never failed to update, but I have experienced various update failures before on 10. This sort of issue is present in both versions, it's just random whether you'll experience it or not, and I wouldn't be surprised if the stuttering issue is just some random driver incompatibility too.
- stuartq 4y agoI don't think that's true. Vista was so hated, that 7 was pretty much universally heralded as a big improvement, even if half of that was the ecosystem getting used to the new driver model introduced by Vista. And as others have observed, 2000 was an immediate hit with everyone who tried it.
- ptero 4y agoFor me, the big change came with Windows 2000. It had user benefits from 9x in a stable package. That was the first version that I can play games on and also leave it running for months, just like a Linux box.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoCurious if you'd ever used a version of Windows NT prior to 2000? Since 2000 was part of the NT line, it might not be a fair comparison.
- zabzonk 4y agoi used several versions of nt prior to 2k - 2k was better than those in every respect.
- bombcar 4y agoWindows NT before 2000 had problems with games and such, 2000 worked well because most games were now working to target XP ( and 2k had better compatibility with 98 anyway).
- Dalewyn 4y agoWindows NT 4.0's problems with gaming have everything to do with only supporting DirectX up to version 3.0a. Yes, you read that right: DirectX 3.0a. Windows 2000 by contrast supported DirectX all the way through DirectX 9.0c, same as Windows XP, 98, and ME. This is why Windows 2000 could run games properly.
- jackvalentine 4y agoGaming on NT had a lot of compatibility issues and I don’t think MS ever released officially some of the Direct3D updates for NT.
- ptero 4y agoI did not use NT at home, but I occasionally used it at school. For me at that time, the ability to play games had been as strong a requirement as the ability to be stable and run word processing, email clients and VC++. So I would use Win95 and curse its (in)stability and reboot several times per day, but not switch to NT. Also, NT cost an arm and a leg for a student. Win2k was a huge improvement in every respect. My 2c.
- brk 4y agoI’ve been using MacOS as my daily desktop for over a decade, switching from Linux. Seeing the busy cursor is so rare I can’t recall the last time. And I have tons of things open all the time.
- masswerk 4y agoMaybe it's related to some cloud service? (However, MS Word used to give you a fair amount of exposure to the beach ball. But I'm not familiar with any of the later versions.)
- lmm 4y ago> None of Microsoft's operating systems were as good as Windows XP Huh? XP added nothing to 2000 except useless bling.
- Dwedit 4y agoDirect3D 9.0c
- wkat4242 4y agoIt was also supported on Win2k. For D3D 10 you have a point though.
- IntelMiner 4y agoDirectX 10 required Vista I remember being gifted Shattered Horizon (a DX10 launch title) and thinking "it really doesn't look that great" Halo 2 for Vista also required DX10 even though the original Xbox was hardware DX 8.1 only
- sanitycheck 4y agoMy thoughts exactly! Except I wouldn't call it bling, I'd call it a hideous Fisher Price aesthetic. I stuck with 2000 as long as I could before gaming (and maybe.. a certain version of Visual Studio?) eventually forced a switch to XP (with the "classic" theme).
- timbit42 4y agoThe only XP feature I miss in 2000 is the ability to align icons to a grid.
- marcodiego 4y agoMost people I know that have some experience say that w2k was the best one ms ever released.
- NotYourLawyer 4y agoWindows 7 was legitimately good. Everything since has been a step in the wrong direction.
- jbm 4y agoThis is not even a radical viewpoint, which is why the downvotes seem irrational. I have seen "normies" pontificating on how Windows XP was perfect for them and how they have seen no benefit going forward. If I am being maximally charitable, the benefits that come afterwards are drivers, gaming-related (DirectX) or security-related (which is not a user-facing feature). All of them are nice, but not at the cost that the end user perceives; a slow, painful experience, with an OS that crashes randomly and has weird inconsistencies everywhere. I have mostly stuck to Ubuntu for desktops (since 8.04) and MacOS for laptops (since Snow Leopard). (Unrelated, I also notice the busy cursor, which is why I went back to Ubuntu once I was able to get a desktop)
- Brendinooo 4y agoMy daily driver computing timeline is something like Win3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, OSX 10.4-10.11, then some combo of Ubuntu/Pop_OS. I think Windows peaked with XP and macOS with Snow Leopard, with the caveats that Spotlight-like searching in both was primitive/nonexistent at that time and would have been a great improvement, and XP didn't have virtual desktops. That 2001-2006 era featured systems that had learned a bunch of lessons from 10-20 years of mainstream GUI computing, but hadn't been consumed by feature bloat and a bunch of Internet connectivity and convergence stuff that I'm not interested in. XP's design was apparently polarizing but I loved it. I was in a modding phase at that point and loved making my own themes.
- munchler 4y agoWhat is a "moral market share"? Is that like the market share that you wish something had, instead of the market share it actually has?