I’d still use Windows 7 (or honestly, even Windows 2000) if I could. Everything since has been a step in the wrong direction.
But there is also a massive number of small things added and improve. Just between base Win10 and more recent Win10 there is a huge number of features added regarding for example how apps DPI scale, especially when moving across multiple screens with different DPI for example. Or WSL. So I wouldn't agree "everything" is going in the wrong direction. Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement which required a third party tool under Win7 but no more since 2010CU. The new terminal... the list goes on and on.
It's been on my mind lately that Windows really hasn't done much lately except improving upon the way it's an Azure and Ads vehicle. That's the real "innovation".
The OS is no longer the product, it's just an appendage to the cloud. The mushroom, if you will. The mycelium it's connected to is much larger.
> The OS is no longer the product
It used to be that the product was office, sql server, exchange and windows was the vehicle to deliver it. It’s really not so different that the products are OneDrive or AppInsights or GitHub.
And the security model is just stoopid. It does not take into account the modern web (ransomware).
Too bad we have to choose between no spy-ware in the OS andd different DPI monitors.
Just now I hit that chord once to try the feature out , it came up but I hit "escape" to cancel the interaction. Now, typing the chord a second time, Windows no longer brings up the snipping UI. If I can find a show-stopping bug in an "amazing improvement" in five seconds then, I'm sorry, but it's not an improvement.
Ditto with the new Windows Terminal: occasionally connecting via SSH to a box already running `tmux` will just crash the renderer. Of course crashing the renderer (a fairly fatal error for a terminal emulator) doesn't tear down the program (!?!) so the renderer continues to crash once per frame drawn, every time you say OK to dismiss the error, until you terminate the program.
I cannot even think of something new in Windows 10 or 11 that has not, at some point, given me grief. The new task manager refresh, maybe, but I still have to dive into Resource Monitor (Vista) multiple times weekly, so even that improvement is not so good that it displaces its predecessors.
This is software that costs 100s (Windows, Office) or 1000s (VS) of dollars, and they can't even get it right. I generally like surreal humor, but we are way beyond absurd at this point.
Snipping tool has been built in for a while now
It was a solid, speedy OS. Now at a new job I use Windows 11 and it’s a bit of a pain.
Would use Windows 2000 instead if still useful today, but I doubt I could run all the software I need for my job, sadly.
There was a brief period of Alpha machines that ran 64-bit CPU's that had early "Whistler" builds but nothing ever released to the public