4 ms·

95 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 ba

95 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 ago
You 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 ago
  It 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 ago
  I'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 ago
    And 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 ago
      For 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 ago
        You 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.
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    If you're breaking out 98 into two releases, then you should probably break out XP into pre-service-packs and post. IME it wasn't until SP3 that XP really felt solid, depending on what hardware you were running.
    - ok123456 4y ago
      Pre-SP3 XP was slow out of the box, buggy, and insecure.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  There’s also Windows 2000, which I think was the worst of all.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    It was a server and workstation OS not really suited for consumer desktop.
    - zabzonk 4y ago
      i used it as my daily driver on a sony laptop - worked like a charm.
    - Mike_12345 4y ago
      It 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 ago
    Oh 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 ago
    I 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 ago
    it was brilliant - fast and very stable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- asciimov 4y ago
  I 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 ago
  ME 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 ago
  Some 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 ago
    And broken USB support. Even with OSR3 it didn't quite work with many devices.
david2ndaccount 4y ago
10 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 ago
What do you dislike about 95?
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  It 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 ago
  95'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 ago
  Windows 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 ago
Instability 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 ago
  haven'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 ago
I 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.

thriftwy 4y ago

You 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 ago
It 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 ago
I'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 ago
  And 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 ago
    For 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 ago
      You 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.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  If you're breaking out 98 into two releases, then you should probably break out XP into pre-service-packs and post. IME it wasn't until SP3 that XP really felt solid, depending on what hardware you were running.
  - ok123456 4y ago
    Pre-SP3 XP was slow out of the box, buggy, and insecure.
lawgimenez 4y ago
There’s also Windows 2000, which I think was the worst of all.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  It was a server and workstation OS not really suited for consumer desktop.
  - zabzonk 4y ago
    i used it as my daily driver on a sony laptop - worked like a charm.
  - Mike_12345 4y ago
    It 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 ago
  Oh 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 ago
  I 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 ago
  it was brilliant - fast and very stable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
asciimov 4y ago
I 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 ago
ME 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 ago
Some 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 ago
  And broken USB support. Even with OSR3 it didn't quite work with many devices.

david2ndaccount 4y ago

10 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 ago

What do you dislike about 95?

FartyMcFarter 4y ago
It 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 ago
95'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 ago
Windows 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 ago

Instability 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 ago
haven'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 ago

I 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.