3 ms·

Win 2000 is the first MS Windows that did not crash very often. I used it as my primary desktop OS for as long as I could until I switched to XP. The best Windo

Win 2000 is the first MS Windows that did not crash very often. I used it as my primary desktop OS for as long as I could until I switched to XP. The best Windows IMHO.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
I agree. I still feel deeply nostalgic for Windows 2000. Everything was instant. And almost every program did more than what Slack does today and yet Slack is sluggishly slow. We went wrong somewhere.
- markus_zhang 3y ago
  100%. And the UI is intuitive. If it looks like a button, it is. The scrollbar doesn't disappear randomly and actually is wide enough to grab easily. Everything deteriorated once they went to the flat design. I need to find out which consultancy made the recommendation and everyone followed.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    Flat design was welcomed by a lot of designers as it required far lesser skill compared to designers before the flat era. As a result it spread rapidly.
    - markus_zhang 3y ago
      Thanks for the explanation, but why? Is drawing a proper button that hard comparing to a rectangle?
    - JoshuaRogers 3y ago
      This might be a bit disingenuous. Another slightly less insulting yet equally valid interpretation is that design as a whole has shifted over the last decade plus to value form over function. The current unbridled minimalist aesthetic has a futuristic look attracts companies that want to look futuristic (Apple, Tesla, Microsoft…) And for companies that aren’t leaders? Many of them want to be seen as such anyway, or at least not seen as irrelevant. (We might remember how X started popping up in all manner of names when XP came out.) To some degree there is room for this as long as function remains a primary goal, however we might reasonably argue that the current competition in technology is to look sleek, not to actually empower end users, leading to a design language that’s main purpose is to look nice but not be ultimately useful.
lproven 3y ago
It was, but before it, NT 3.51 was both very fast and very stable... if you could tolerate the Program Manager/File Manager UI. NT 4 reorganised the kernel and that badly impacted stability. Win2K fixed that.
- markus_zhang 3y ago
  I didn't get the chance to use NT 3/4 but maybe that's for another day! I still remember the day my father installed Windows 3.1, pure magic. I have never used any GUI OS before that (that was DOS and then we went straight for Win 3.1).
  - lproven 3y ago
    I did set up one NT4 box in the 21st century. I was building a PC for a broke mate of mine, and all I had to spare was about 40MB of RAM. The choice was either Windows ME, which didn't run great in that little, or NT4, for which it was quite generous. NT4 looked like Win95 and it was quite solid. No power management, no USB support, not FAT32, but it didn't crash. WinME did all them but was not very stable. NT changed significantly over its lifetime. I deployed and supported all versions in production. NT 3.1: first release. Big, slow, no long filenames on FAT, needed a crazy 32MB of RAM in 1993, meaning a £5000+ PC. But very solid, and great networking. NT 3.5: LFNs on FAT. Bit smaller and faster and more stable. NT 3.51: a classic release. Smaller and faster still. I ran my home fileserver on NT 3.51 for years, in 8MB of RAM. Slow on the console, fine over a 10Mb/sec LAN. Absolutely rock solid, very quick. NT 4: finally you get Explorer and the Win95 desktop, but bigger, slower, less stable. No plug'n'play, only very rudimentary power management, little to no useful 3D support. Not much use on laptops. But looked as good as Win95/98 and was as easy to use. NT 5, AKA "Windows 2000": finally, full power management, full PnP, hotplug, USB, FAT32. All the good stuff that NT4 couldn't do. Bigger, slower, but very solid and worked well. NT 5.1, AKA "Windows XP": Win2K plus themes, some bundled junk you can't uninstall like Movie Maker. Boots faster, much quicker hibernation/resume... and that is all. Bigger, slower, looks cheap and plastic. I preferred W2K.
    - CRConrad 3y ago

Win 2000 is the first MS Windows that did not crash very often. I used it as my primary desktop OS for as long as I could until I switched to XP. The best Windows IMHO.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

I agree. I still feel deeply nostalgic for Windows 2000. Everything was instant. And almost every program did more than what Slack does today and yet Slack is sluggishly slow. We went wrong somewhere.

markus_zhang 3y ago
100%. And the UI is intuitive. If it looks like a button, it is. The scrollbar doesn't disappear randomly and actually is wide enough to grab easily. Everything deteriorated once they went to the flat design. I need to find out which consultancy made the recommendation and everyone followed.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Flat design was welcomed by a lot of designers as it required far lesser skill compared to designers before the flat era. As a result it spread rapidly.
  - markus_zhang 3y ago
    Thanks for the explanation, but why? Is drawing a proper button that hard comparing to a rectangle?
  - JoshuaRogers 3y ago
    This might be a bit disingenuous. Another slightly less insulting yet equally valid interpretation is that design as a whole has shifted over the last decade plus to value form over function. The current unbridled minimalist aesthetic has a futuristic look attracts companies that want to look futuristic (Apple, Tesla, Microsoft…) And for companies that aren’t leaders? Many of them want to be seen as such anyway, or at least not seen as irrelevant. (We might remember how X started popping up in all manner of names when XP came out.) To some degree there is room for this as long as function remains a primary goal, however we might reasonably argue that the current competition in technology is to look sleek, not to actually empower end users, leading to a design language that’s main purpose is to look nice but not be ultimately useful.

lproven 3y ago

It was, but before it, NT 3.51 was both very fast and very stable... if you could tolerate the Program Manager/File Manager UI. NT 4 reorganised the kernel and that badly impacted stability. Win2K fixed that.

markus_zhang 3y ago
I didn't get the chance to use NT 3/4 but maybe that's for another day! I still remember the day my father installed Windows 3.1, pure magic. I have never used any GUI OS before that (that was DOS and then we went straight for Win 3.1).
- lproven 3y ago
  I did set up one NT4 box in the 21st century. I was building a PC for a broke mate of mine, and all I had to spare was about 40MB of RAM. The choice was either Windows ME, which didn't run great in that little, or NT4, for which it was quite generous. NT4 looked like Win95 and it was quite solid. No power management, no USB support, not FAT32, but it didn't crash. WinME did all them but was not very stable. NT changed significantly over its lifetime. I deployed and supported all versions in production. NT 3.1: first release. Big, slow, no long filenames on FAT, needed a crazy 32MB of RAM in 1993, meaning a £5000+ PC. But very solid, and great networking. NT 3.5: LFNs on FAT. Bit smaller and faster and more stable. NT 3.51: a classic release. Smaller and faster still. I ran my home fileserver on NT 3.51 for years, in 8MB of RAM. Slow on the console, fine over a 10Mb/sec LAN. Absolutely rock solid, very quick. NT 4: finally you get Explorer and the Win95 desktop, but bigger, slower, less stable. No plug'n'play, only very rudimentary power management, little to no useful 3D support. Not much use on laptops. But looked as good as Win95/98 and was as easy to use. NT 5, AKA "Windows 2000": finally, full power management, full PnP, hotplug, USB, FAT32. All the good stuff that NT4 couldn't do. Bigger, slower, but very solid and worked well. NT 5.1, AKA "Windows XP": Win2K plus themes, some bundled junk you can't uninstall like Movie Maker. Boots faster, much quicker hibernation/resume... and that is all. Bigger, slower, looks cheap and plastic. I preferred W2K.
  - CRConrad 3y ago