> That was the best version Microsoft ever made
No. 7 was a rollback on Vista. The best one which was not a step back but rather a step forward was Windows 2000. (Some even swear by NT4, which I feel also has some merit.)
No. 7 was a rollback on Vista. The best one which was not a step back but rather a step forward was Windows 2000. (Some even swear by NT4, which I feel also has some merit.)
There was also some tiny difference between the active window colors as well, IIRC.
But you can choose "Windows Classic" as a style in Windows 7 and it will not to be too different, although some thing may be annoying.
For example, Windows 2000 was more keyboard-friendly. In Explorer, you edit the path on the top input, then you tab and you move between files. Since Windows XP that has been increasing, and its 5 tabs in Windows 7. Pratically unusable
The control panel is not yet fucked up like in Windows 8+ but still you can guess the year in which the entry was written.
On the other side, the start menu is better because you have a search field that works well (no web stupid web searches there).
But Windows 2000 was solid as well
Microsoft had to switch the ways drivers work for some very necessary security reasons. This led to many hardware manufacturers just not making new drivers or slapping together the shitiest thing and hoping it worked. Took a few years but eventually everyone had new hardware (with decent compatible drivers), at which point 7 came out which is basically Vista with a new skin.
Hell, at the end its life an up to date Vista was actually pretty decent.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/03/the-vista-capable-de...
So instead of having everyone working together to make an OS where managed stacks take the main role, as Google has managed to push no matter what, regarding Android and ChromeOS, we got Longhorn's demise and its ideas being redone in COM and C++, WinDev darlings.
My completely unqualified ranking…
- 2k: excellent, top Windows
- XP: fine, if you turn off all the UI changes, but not appealing over 2k in any way I can recall
- Vista: didn’t use it, but I think it got a bad rep for efforts that should’ve been lauded
- 7: good enough, mostly didn’t suck for web compatibility testing
- 8: I’m one of the weirdos who found it very compelling… but not enough to actually use it. I’m sure it was as bad in practice as everyone who used it thinks, but I really appreciated the bold attempt at a UI for any device. And I’d been very taken by earlier Metro.
- 10: seemed like a perfectly reasonable reversion to evolving 7, but also seemed like it got weirder and worse as they dug into no new versions.
- 11: new version doesn’t seem to have improved things on that front.
- 3.x-98: I didn’t like them, but objectively they were probably just as good as their contemporary Mac offerings just catering to different markets
- ME: lol why even did this exist
To get Internet Explorer 5.5 deployed as widely as possible which was their strategy pre-DOJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application
Maybe I’m just softening because I haven’t had to deal with IE for so long, but I really do think it’s an incredible achievement that MS transitioned Windows with as little disruption as they did, with all sorts of good and bad incentives. It’s a wonder Windows even still works, much less keeping such a large majority of install base. Obviously it’s not my favorite software in the world, but I’m thoroughly impressed with what the devs have pulled off through a cartoonish timeline of priority shifts with unbelievable backcompat expectations.
- 95/98 are a OS on their own although still having quite some old DOS code in there.
All others versions are following the NT tree.
NT 4.0 for non-x86 hardware deserves a honorable mention despite the fact i'm absolutely not a Microsoft fan. It was quite impressive during it's time, but hardly to be seen anywhere.
I agree 95 was a huge step relatively, but agree it was ~on par with my preferred Mac contemporary. Granted it does deserve mention for licensing music by Brian Eno… and a button licensed by another famous musician.
I'm on the fence, but frequently say that 2000 was probably the best. Then I have to qualify that maybe the preview 64-bit XP or full win2003 might be first or in the running because 64-bit is such a major/critical feature to modern computer that if you wanted to sell a modern "Windows for business" release you would have to pick one of the 64-bit versions rather than rolling back to 2k.
I too ran 2k3 (64-bit of course on my athlon64) for a while as a desktop and technically it was fantastic, but eventually ended up switching back to XP with a few hacks to just avoid the general issue that a number of pieces of desktop software refused to run on a "server OS" without buying the server license for $$$$.