• @psvrh@lemmy.ca
    1•7 months ago

    To be honest:

    • DOS->Regret
    • Win31->Regret
    • Win95->Meh
    • Win98->Spite & outright hate. Active Desktop and ActiveX integration was responsible for so much evil. This was a bad time: no real security, no journalling filesystem, malware every week, registry that would get damaged if you looked at it funny. Ugh…
    • NT3.5->NT4->2000 was my favourite
    • XP and on was a mixture of ennui and cold loathing until we get to Win8, which actually wasn’t that bad if you ignore the full-screen Start menu

    Win11 has brought me that good old Windows feeling, though. And by “good old feeling” I mean disliking Microsoft software.

    I miss the NT3/NT4/Win2K era. That was a nice time.

    • HexesofVexes
      2•7 months ago

      The original 98 was rough around the edges (BSODs galore) but SE was a bit more stable.

      XP was so stable you could generally run things without too many issues barring running out of memory (late era)

      • @psvrh@lemmy.ca
        1•7 months ago

        XP took a while to get there, though, and it suffered until SP3 with woefully inadequate security for the era.

        We tend to remember the final service packs of given version of Windows as "good"and forget the long road that got us there.

        • 7 I think gets a pass because it really was a Vista service pack, and Vista took most of the reputational hit.

        • 8 was the first version I recall that really worked well out of the box, other than the UI. 10 continued that trend and it’s been refinements since.

        • Even 2k and NT4 took a while to get good. I still recall the bad day that was NT4 SP6.

        I think that’s what makes 11 so jarring. It’s been a decade since Microsoft pushed that much change that quickly.