5 ms·

My first MS OS was DOS 2.x (forgot the exact point release...). I remember going to Costco as a kid and getting excited whenever a new version of DOS, and later

My first MS OS was DOS 2.x (forgot the exact point release...). I remember going to Costco as a kid and getting excited whenever a new version of DOS, and later Windows came out because each and every one of them was a true upgrade in every sense of the word. They built things for the users and it showed. I even got to beta test Windows 95 and was blown away when it came out. The last good OS MS released was Windows XP. After that the trend was clear. They were no-longer building stuff for users and instead were building for companies to take advantage of users. MS has completely lost my trust and I doubt they will ever get it back.

estebank 2y ago
> The last good OS MS released was Windows XP. I'm reminded of how much people hated it when it came out. Post Vista it was widely liked. A lot of people are also nostalgic of 7 now. I wonder if we'll have a batch of people nostalgic for 10 or 11 in a decade in the same vein. I doubt it, but who knows. The old rule was "every other release is loved/hated", which held until at least 10 (8 was hated, 10 was somewhat accepted). I also remember that 10 was supposed to be "the last version of Windows".
- codezero 2y ago
  Yeah a lot of people stayed on 98 SE2 until the XP service packs were out and XP was solid.
- isk517 2y ago
  Don't think I've ever encounter someone that didn't become nostalgic for 10 after having to switch to 11. So many pointless UI changes, and just like with 8 none of them are necessary to force the user to use beyond some incessant need to dictate how users do things on the part of Microsoft.
- dowager_dan99 2y ago
  I really have not seen anything material since windows 7 that would meet the bar of major improvement. Windows 7 with bug & security fixes, adding support for new hardware standards and SW developments, and feature evolution would be superior to what we have today IMO. Prior to win7 all the revolutionary "coming next" things either became impractical or were dropped. I have a desktop that still runs all tripe-A games and is my main development machine running win10 that MS says is a boat anchor come the fall; this will be my last windows machine. Microsoft has been pretty good to me as a developer (despite some of the technologies intentionally designed to do nothing but distract and consume attention) but the consumer side is a pathological shit-show and appears to really hate people (or at least love money more). MS looks a lot like the White House these days.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Windows XP was a downer for many when it came out because it wasn't Windows 98SE++ (and Windows ME was a flop) - it was Windows 2000 with a "fisher price" skin. For those in the know, that was great. Windows XP + classic theme + drivers (even if you had to find the W2k drivers) was incredibly stable and performant. But it took a few years for games to catch up and get the updates, and so for the "tech oriented" crowd (which were often gamers), it took a bit to catch on. But its longevity is a tribute to how "good it was" and how hard it was to improve from it. Vista introduced more stability at the expense of requiring new drivers, so they re-released Vista a few years later as 7 (there's really no major differences between Vista and 7 except a few years of upgrades to drivers and hardware). The five years between XP and Vista certainly didn't help matters, either. If you wait that long, you better be willing to support it for decades. Windows XP's last update was 18 years after it was shipped.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    Windows XP was the beginning of the downhill slide for me because it was the first "phone home" version of Windows. I'm not gonna gainsay anyone who says it was good, I'm sure they have lots of legitimate fond memories of Space Cadet Pinball, Half-Life 2, etc. But the Windows XP era was the first one where "what's happening with Windows" just passed me by. I was through with Microsoft's shenanigans starting around then.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      Hehe even today I still remember FCKGW and using it on completely legitimate copies just to avoid having to find whatever the actual one was.
      - bitwize 2y ago
        Yeah I missed out on using what I call the "FuCKinG Windows" code. I was able to commit to Linux full time, even find work in it.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    Vista suffered from being stuck in PM hell. MS was working on so many new features for longhorn that were never fully finished and later scrapped. The only real significant (and important) change was the HAL.
- epoxy_sauce 2y ago
  I still use 7 on my offline pcs. Its still such a fantastic operating system and I don't see us getting another like it from ms. I'm one of those nostalgia folks who can't move on. People are certainly feeling the same way 10 to 11. That rule can always be gamed too, heh. I felt it went 8 bad, 8.1 good, 10 bad. Then 11 broke the pattern.
  - estebank 2y ago
    Consider trying out Linux+KDE, if the reason to use 7 isn't specific software on older hardware. It feels like a continuation of Windows 7 as a desktop for the most part.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      It really depends how you configure it. It has an amazing wealth of configuration settings and that's before diving into the whole addon rabbit hole. This is really what I love about KDE. Everyone else is now going for the apple opinionated design "Just use it like we meant it to be used" philosophy. Even other Linux desktops like gnome (in fact gnome is one of the worst offenders) With KDE you can simply align it with your own opinions.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  I knew someone who hated it and would instead install windows 2000 on everything. And he would do so claiming defiance of Microsoft for ruining the most perfect operating system only for money. Then when 7 came out he proclaimed he would never use a new windows again and remain on 2000 forever. I never really got why he was so upset. For me I didn’t like the interface that was in vista or in windows 8. But it wasn’t ever the end of the world. And this was all in the context of playing games! He didn’t develop software or anything. He also hated steam.
- jmward01 2y ago
  Windows XP was the last good OS, but Windows 2k was the last one that really added a lot of user centered features and usability.
Aurornis 2y ago
There’s an old joke that if you ask people to pinpoint the golden age of Saturday Night Live, they’ll give you an answer that coincides with whenever they were in high school. It’s less true now in the era of on-demand streaming of the entire backlog, but for the longest time people would simply remember when SNL was fresh and new and exciting. Funnily enough, I see the same thing playing out with computers, operating systems, the internet, and video games. People identify the peak as some time when they were younger and it was all new and exciting. Everything was downhill since then. Talk to younger people and they’ll already tell you that Windows 10 was actually the GOAT and they won’t comprehend any fascination with Windows XP. That was the junky old OS they had to deal with on old computers once.
- cogman10 2y ago
  What seems to be happening (to me) is roughly every other generation MS makes massive changes to the OS which most people hate for being different, then they release a new version of the OS which is just basically polishing those features, maybe walking a couple back, and that becomes the "beloved" version of windows. People hated Vista, and loved 7. Yet 7 was really just vista with a bit of polish. What changed is when 7 came out the average computer capabilities had gone up significantly. People hated 8, but loved 10. The only real difference between the two is MS dropping the weird tablet mode that nobody wanted/asked for. People currently hate 11, I suspect 12 will be loved mostly because MS will back off a bit on some of the new innovative UI changes and advertising everywhere.
  - mrmattyboy 2y ago
    I see what you mean.. but if you take a look at vista vs 7.. Microsoft shoved glass panels, widgets and such down the user's throat in Vista. It was a new look and they wanted to make you realise it. Without spinning a fresh 7 machine now, I'm certain it was very toned down. But, I could be very wrong about this :D Last time I used Windows was XP (I mean, granted last week) because nostalgia is a real thing :D Edit: I can't reply (not sure why, thread too deep?) but @cogman10, you're right! My memory is bad :(
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
> They were no-longer building stuff for users and instead were building for companies to take advantage of users. This may be netlore at this point, but IIRC, a big reason why XP pushed for product keys was for cancelled experiments with subscription pricing (or at least updates for paying customers only). That plug was pulled before launch due to lack of widespread broadband infrastructure for the downloads. Continuous updates are a nightmare enabled by modern CDNs and cable.
lurk2 2y ago
> The last good OS MS released was Windows XP. After that the trend was clear. They were no-longer building stuff for users and instead were building for companies to take advantage of users. What was wrong with Windows 7? Windows Vista was poorly designed but it wasn't intentionally user-hostile. I don't remember the bloatware and design gimmicks starting until Windows 8.
keernan 2y ago
>>getting excited whenever a new version of DOS, and later Windows came out And installing the new version required 20+ 3.5 inch 'floppies'
xattt 2y ago
One thing I couldn’t pinpoint, until recently, was the little bit of excitement that I felt as kid for the iterative box art of Windows releases. 3.1 was a white box. 95 was sky and clouds. 98 was more cloudy clouds. NT 4.0 was sky turning into space. You can imagine my disappointment when ME and 2k were just white boxes. Very tangential, but I had the same kind of intrigue for Maxis games where SIM was stylized as a colour and the game name with its own font.
crowdstriker 2y ago
Why are boomers so stubborn and adamant about things they form opinions of and won't change their mind, even when they're wrong? Is it a lack of intelligence? Or too much pride? Both? Kick rocks, by the way.
mmooss 2y ago
Wasn't Windows before XP SP2 or Vista absurdly insecure?

estebank 2y ago

> The last good OS MS released was Windows XP. I'm reminded of how much people hated it when it came out. Post Vista it was widely liked. A lot of people are also nostalgic of 7 now. I wonder if we'll have a batch of people nostalgic for 10 or 11 in a decade in the same vein. I doubt it, but who knows. The old rule was "every other release is loved/hated", which held until at least 10 (8 was hated, 10 was somewhat accepted). I also remember that 10 was supposed to be "the last version of Windows".

codezero 2y ago
Yeah a lot of people stayed on 98 SE2 until the XP service packs were out and XP was solid.
isk517 2y ago
Don't think I've ever encounter someone that didn't become nostalgic for 10 after having to switch to 11. So many pointless UI changes, and just like with 8 none of them are necessary to force the user to use beyond some incessant need to dictate how users do things on the part of Microsoft.
dowager_dan99 2y ago
I really have not seen anything material since windows 7 that would meet the bar of major improvement. Windows 7 with bug & security fixes, adding support for new hardware standards and SW developments, and feature evolution would be superior to what we have today IMO. Prior to win7 all the revolutionary "coming next" things either became impractical or were dropped. I have a desktop that still runs all tripe-A games and is my main development machine running win10 that MS says is a boat anchor come the fall; this will be my last windows machine. Microsoft has been pretty good to me as a developer (despite some of the technologies intentionally designed to do nothing but distract and consume attention) but the consumer side is a pathological shit-show and appears to really hate people (or at least love money more). MS looks a lot like the White House these days.
bombcar 2y ago
Windows XP was a downer for many when it came out because it wasn't Windows 98SE++ (and Windows ME was a flop) - it was Windows 2000 with a "fisher price" skin. For those in the know, that was great. Windows XP + classic theme + drivers (even if you had to find the W2k drivers) was incredibly stable and performant. But it took a few years for games to catch up and get the updates, and so for the "tech oriented" crowd (which were often gamers), it took a bit to catch on. But its longevity is a tribute to how "good it was" and how hard it was to improve from it. Vista introduced more stability at the expense of requiring new drivers, so they re-released Vista a few years later as 7 (there's really no major differences between Vista and 7 except a few years of upgrades to drivers and hardware). The five years between XP and Vista certainly didn't help matters, either. If you wait that long, you better be willing to support it for decades. Windows XP's last update was 18 years after it was shipped.
- bitwize 2y ago
  Windows XP was the beginning of the downhill slide for me because it was the first "phone home" version of Windows. I'm not gonna gainsay anyone who says it was good, I'm sure they have lots of legitimate fond memories of Space Cadet Pinball, Half-Life 2, etc. But the Windows XP era was the first one where "what's happening with Windows" just passed me by. I was through with Microsoft's shenanigans starting around then.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Hehe even today I still remember FCKGW and using it on completely legitimate copies just to avoid having to find whatever the actual one was.
    - bitwize 2y ago
      Yeah I missed out on using what I call the "FuCKinG Windows" code. I was able to commit to Linux full time, even find work in it.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Vista suffered from being stuck in PM hell. MS was working on so many new features for longhorn that were never fully finished and later scrapped. The only real significant (and important) change was the HAL.
epoxy_sauce 2y ago
I still use 7 on my offline pcs. Its still such a fantastic operating system and I don't see us getting another like it from ms. I'm one of those nostalgia folks who can't move on. People are certainly feeling the same way 10 to 11. That rule can always be gamed too, heh. I felt it went 8 bad, 8.1 good, 10 bad. Then 11 broke the pattern.
- estebank 2y ago
  Consider trying out Linux+KDE, if the reason to use 7 isn't specific software on older hardware. It feels like a continuation of Windows 7 as a desktop for the most part.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It really depends how you configure it. It has an amazing wealth of configuration settings and that's before diving into the whole addon rabbit hole. This is really what I love about KDE. Everyone else is now going for the apple opinionated design "Just use it like we meant it to be used" philosophy. Even other Linux desktops like gnome (in fact gnome is one of the worst offenders) With KDE you can simply align it with your own opinions.
mnky9800n 2y ago
I knew someone who hated it and would instead install windows 2000 on everything. And he would do so claiming defiance of Microsoft for ruining the most perfect operating system only for money. Then when 7 came out he proclaimed he would never use a new windows again and remain on 2000 forever. I never really got why he was so upset. For me I didn’t like the interface that was in vista or in windows 8. But it wasn’t ever the end of the world. And this was all in the context of playing games! He didn’t develop software or anything. He also hated steam.
jmward01 2y ago
Windows XP was the last good OS, but Windows 2k was the last one that really added a lot of user centered features and usability.

Aurornis 2y ago

There’s an old joke that if you ask people to pinpoint the golden age of Saturday Night Live, they’ll give you an answer that coincides with whenever they were in high school. It’s less true now in the era of on-demand streaming of the entire backlog, but for the longest time people would simply remember when SNL was fresh and new and exciting. Funnily enough, I see the same thing playing out with computers, operating systems, the internet, and video games. People identify the peak as some time when they were younger and it was all new and exciting. Everything was downhill since then. Talk to younger people and they’ll already tell you that Windows 10 was actually the GOAT and they won’t comprehend any fascination with Windows XP. That was the junky old OS they had to deal with on old computers once.

cogman10 2y ago
What seems to be happening (to me) is roughly every other generation MS makes massive changes to the OS which most people hate for being different, then they release a new version of the OS which is just basically polishing those features, maybe walking a couple back, and that becomes the "beloved" version of windows. People hated Vista, and loved 7. Yet 7 was really just vista with a bit of polish. What changed is when 7 came out the average computer capabilities had gone up significantly. People hated 8, but loved 10. The only real difference between the two is MS dropping the weird tablet mode that nobody wanted/asked for. People currently hate 11, I suspect 12 will be loved mostly because MS will back off a bit on some of the new innovative UI changes and advertising everywhere.
- mrmattyboy 2y ago
  I see what you mean.. but if you take a look at vista vs 7.. Microsoft shoved glass panels, widgets and such down the user's throat in Vista. It was a new look and they wanted to make you realise it. Without spinning a fresh 7 machine now, I'm certain it was very toned down. But, I could be very wrong about this :D Last time I used Windows was XP (I mean, granted last week) because nostalgia is a real thing :D Edit: I can't reply (not sure why, thread too deep?) but @cogman10, you're right! My memory is bad :(

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

> They were no-longer building stuff for users and instead were building for companies to take advantage of users. This may be netlore at this point, but IIRC, a big reason why XP pushed for product keys was for cancelled experiments with subscription pricing (or at least updates for paying customers only). That plug was pulled before launch due to lack of widespread broadband infrastructure for the downloads. Continuous updates are a nightmare enabled by modern CDNs and cable.

lurk2 2y ago

> The last good OS MS released was Windows XP. After that the trend was clear. They were no-longer building stuff for users and instead were building for companies to take advantage of users. What was wrong with Windows 7? Windows Vista was poorly designed but it wasn't intentionally user-hostile. I don't remember the bloatware and design gimmicks starting until Windows 8.

keernan 2y ago

>>getting excited whenever a new version of DOS, and later Windows came out And installing the new version required 20+ 3.5 inch 'floppies'

xattt 2y ago

One thing I couldn’t pinpoint, until recently, was the little bit of excitement that I felt as kid for the iterative box art of Windows releases. 3.1 was a white box. 95 was sky and clouds. 98 was more cloudy clouds. NT 4.0 was sky turning into space. You can imagine my disappointment when ME and 2k were just white boxes. Very tangential, but I had the same kind of intrigue for Maxis games where SIM was stylized as a colour and the game name with its own font.

crowdstriker 2y ago

Why are boomers so stubborn and adamant about things they form opinions of and won't change their mind, even when they're wrong? Is it a lack of intelligence? Or too much pride? Both? Kick rocks, by the way.

mmooss 2y ago

Wasn't Windows before XP SP2 or Vista absurdly insecure?