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Microsoft likes to alternate between good and bad releases of Windows. XP was good, Vista was bad. 7 was good, 8 was bad. 10 was good, and 11 is kind of bad. N

Microsoft likes to alternate between good and bad releases of Windows. XP was good, Vista was bad. 7 was good, 8 was bad. 10 was good, and 11 is kind of bad. Not as bad as Vista or 8, but still noticeably worse than 10. Here’s hoping that 12 will be an OS with upgrading to.

grishka 2y ago
They broke that streak at the turn of the century. 95 was bad, 98 was good, 2000 was good, XP was good, and then Vista was bad.
- geraldcombs 2y ago
  Apparently ME was so bad it's been memory-holed.
  - steve1977 2y ago
    We don’t talk about Window Me
- legitster 2y ago
  Extremely hot take: Vista was not actually that bad. It was just too many new things at once and required such a massive hardware upgrade. Windows 7 was not that fundamentally different, but by the time it came out the bandaid had been ripped off.
  - grishka 2y ago
    Actually, I used Vista myself for around a year, and for me subjectively it was okay. I later upgraded that installation to 7 and used it several more years on the same hardware.
  - steve1977 2y ago
    Pretty much what I have been saying. Windows 7 was in many aspects Vista SE, they just had to give it a new name because Vista was so „tainted“. I mean it even reported as Windows NT 6.1 (Vista was 6.0)
  - plorkyeran 2y ago
    Vista had two major problems: Microsoft understated its minimum requirements and allowed it to be shipped preinstalled on machines that were far short of what it actually required, and UAC was specifically designed to make poorly behaved software unpleasant to use, which was a major problem when every Windows program was poorly behaved. The first could have been easily avoided, but I genuinely don't know how MS could have avoided burning a version on UAC. Maybe if they had shipped it in a service pack first so that XP SP4 was the thing that got a miserable reputation? That clearly wasn't a reasonable option after the Longhorn disaster, though. There were also a lot of small problems that got fixed on the way to Windows 7. 7 did feel a lot like Vista SP2 with some visual tweaks, but it would have been a really impressive SP.
    - legitster 2y ago
      Oh man, I totally forgot about the UAC! That's a great callout.
sys_64738 2y ago
This works when you pick and choose. You ignored Win2K which is the best Windows version ever and Windows 8.1 which was good too.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  Windows Me came out after Windows 2000 so it still works! (but then the timeline breaks at Windows 98SE again... the DOS/9x->NT transition will always be a rift since there were OSes that coexisted)
  - sys_64738 2y ago
    This whole flip-flop is as vacant as Moore’s law. It gets flexed to fit the narrative of the day.
- brokencode 2y ago
  No, it’s just a general theme of Windows releases for the past 20 years. They make big, sweeping changes in one release that people don’t like, then spend multiple years addressing criticism until they come up with something that people like again. Quibble as you may about exact version numbers, but the pattern is not really deniable.

grishka 2y ago

They broke that streak at the turn of the century. 95 was bad, 98 was good, 2000 was good, XP was good, and then Vista was bad.

geraldcombs 2y ago
Apparently ME was so bad it's been memory-holed.
- steve1977 2y ago
  We don’t talk about Window Me
legitster 2y ago
Extremely hot take: Vista was not actually that bad. It was just too many new things at once and required such a massive hardware upgrade. Windows 7 was not that fundamentally different, but by the time it came out the bandaid had been ripped off.
- grishka 2y ago
  Actually, I used Vista myself for around a year, and for me subjectively it was okay. I later upgraded that installation to 7 and used it several more years on the same hardware.
- steve1977 2y ago
  Pretty much what I have been saying. Windows 7 was in many aspects Vista SE, they just had to give it a new name because Vista was so „tainted“. I mean it even reported as Windows NT 6.1 (Vista was 6.0)
- plorkyeran 2y ago
  Vista had two major problems: Microsoft understated its minimum requirements and allowed it to be shipped preinstalled on machines that were far short of what it actually required, and UAC was specifically designed to make poorly behaved software unpleasant to use, which was a major problem when every Windows program was poorly behaved. The first could have been easily avoided, but I genuinely don't know how MS could have avoided burning a version on UAC. Maybe if they had shipped it in a service pack first so that XP SP4 was the thing that got a miserable reputation? That clearly wasn't a reasonable option after the Longhorn disaster, though. There were also a lot of small problems that got fixed on the way to Windows 7. 7 did feel a lot like Vista SP2 with some visual tweaks, but it would have been a really impressive SP.
  - legitster 2y ago
    Oh man, I totally forgot about the UAC! That's a great callout.

sys_64738 2y ago

This works when you pick and choose. You ignored Win2K which is the best Windows version ever and Windows 8.1 which was good too.

kalleboo 2y ago
Windows Me came out after Windows 2000 so it still works! (but then the timeline breaks at Windows 98SE again... the DOS/9x->NT transition will always be a rift since there were OSes that coexisted)
- sys_64738 2y ago
  This whole flip-flop is as vacant as Moore’s law. It gets flexed to fit the narrative of the day.
brokencode 2y ago
No, it’s just a general theme of Windows releases for the past 20 years. They make big, sweeping changes in one release that people don’t like, then spend multiple years addressing criticism until they come up with something that people like again. Quibble as you may about exact version numbers, but the pattern is not really deniable.