Yet, NT4 -> W2K -> XP.... strange how the consumer degraded but the business was a real progression. I was using NT4 at my first job in 98, through till 2000 became more wide spread. Win2000 was a step up, but the driver support (IIRC) could be a bit spotty. But overall it was great. Then XP came a long and added Crayola UI and Zip folder access. It took me a lot longer to move to XP, and when I did I would always go to Control Panel and turn off the dreadful UI and make it go back to using the classic desktop style. But XP stayed relevant right up till 2013 when I changed jobs and no longer needed to use VMs as much... even then there was still one VM I needed to use that was supplied by head office. So XP for me was still in use when they EOL'd it, though only to run a legacy simulation in a VM.

W2k was the first possibly-not-utter-crap version. In the consumer space W3.1 was just DOS with Windows, and didn't even have full multitasking.

W95 was 60% bugs and 40% OS. There was even a really obvious bug in the calculator app. There were all kinds of very very weird - i.e. bad - design decisions both in the code and in the UI. Trying to find fixes and workarounds literally wasted days of almost everyone's time.

The initial release of XP was workable, but by SP1 it was fairly stable and you could actually use it as a working OS without having to deal with driver issues and constant crashes.

Vista was another dog. W7 was very possibly the best Windows. 8 was another WTAF release. 10 is 8 with some improvements, but some added evil in the form of forced telemetry for most users, and such.

This is because since at least ‘95, MS has alternated focus between base technology and polish/reliability/UX. The ones we think of as good (98SE, 2000/XP, 7) are the ones with the focus on polish. The ones we remember as flaky (ME, Vista, 8) are the ones with substantial new tech in them that hadn’t had the additional years of refinement.

For me, Windows 95 OSR2 (OEM service release 2) and 98 were more stable than stock 95. I remember having to obtain it via one of those "100 in 1" pirated CDs, because the OSRs weren't made available to the end users.

I don't use Windows day to day anymore but, my family has Windows 10 and I manage it.

When I sit in the front of the computer, I feel like I'm inside the big space ship in the Wall-e. All the advertisements, forced consumerism and everything.

I really don't know what people are talking about ads? My win 10 has zero ads on it. I turned off all telemetry (i think) with a couple of programs dedicated to doing that. Maybe my pi-hole is blocking the ads?

8 was the first version that hibernates the kernel on shutdown so it can reload it from snapshot on boot. That’s why all windows versions since 8 boot so fast.

Although I find 8.1 still better than 10. Some of its preinstalled apps and UI were just weird, but at least it wasn't anti-user by design. Both are a clear downgrade to Windows 7 though.

Personal experience would indicate that a lot of people hated Windows 8, not just because it took something they were familiar with and threw the biggest curveball at it possible, but because they actively made the UI/UX significantly more difficult to use.

For me the icing on the cake was segregating different apps between "tablet mode" and "desktop mode," where the former would take up the entire screen with no reasonable way to multitask between programs. Not only that but how many apps had (and even still have) both a UWP and standard implementation, from my experience that just confused users as to which they were supposed to use. Heck even today we still have the Settings app and the Control Panel (which is increasingly difficult to access I might add), both with various controls and settings only found in one but not the other.

IMO Windows 10 (sans tracking and forced pre/auto-installing apps) is what Windows 8 should have been from the beginning. Many beneficial changes under the hood, and minor UI changes that don't entirely change the workflow of the OS, but instead augment it for a better experience for both regular and power users. Somehow we've eclipsed the 5-year mark since its release, yet Windows 10 still feels incomplete. Not even just that, but they manage to make it feel even less finished with every new update.

Trauma is best to forget

8 was great on the intended devices. I used it on an asus transformer tablet/laptop and it worked really well. W10 was a step down for that machine because they dialed back the tablet UI.

Windows 8 is fine, _if_ you actually know how to use Windows. (Protip: Win-D takes you to the desktop from the app grid.) I would go so far as to say it's good, if you're using a touchscreen or tablet; the live tiles were useful.

Always amused me that the OS X Launchpad is also a ugly grid of huge app icons that takes up the entire screen, just like the Windows 8 start screen, yet nobody says a word about that.