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Comment by snitzr | Hacker News Reader

The 420 with Windows 7 is my personal idea of the peak of desktop computing. 2011 was also around the peak of computing in general considering it was right before social media turned hellish psyop and smartphones became distraction / disempowerment devices.

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Win 7 SP1 was peak desktop computing for sure. Actual desktop-first design without security kindergarten cancer that is every windows OS after.

What are you claiming was improved compared to Win2K? As far as I can remember everything after that was dumbed-down UI and pointless security clickthroughs.

Win+arrow keys for docking to sides I use all the time. Much better multi monitor support. Grouping taskbar. Start menu that lets you search (ie to run notepad, press win then start typing note.. and hit enter)

The search box in the start menu was a huge improvement for me. And AeroSnap to a lesser degree. On MATE, I set Win+arrow keys to do the same thing.

Vista added a lot of usability features like window snapping and start search, but it's underlying OS was literally unfinished. 7 became what Vista, could've been and even Vista became usable when enough updates were applied.

7 disabled a lot of the security prompts for usability. It didn't remove them, it actually just automatically approved them. These days, most software doesn't need admin privileges anymore. You could always turn off all of the prompts if you wanted to, I think there were 4 levels of prompt severity?

Mostly 64-bit by default (going from 4GB to 16GB in 2011 was huge), SSD Trim support and some updated networking protocols.

It's all inside. The wow64, very good management, etc. etc. And Win7 is the last to have the "no desktop compositor" (aka "win95 looks") fallback.

I have a T530 and it's perfect. It's been around the world with me and has one single crack in the plastic to show for its decade of service. I have no clue how many times I've disassembled it for cleaning or upgrades or just plain tinkering. I have a new extended battery that hangs out the back like a tumor, but this bad boy gives me five whole hours on a charge. My modern work laptop lasts 40 minutes, maybe.

It's thick, it's heavy, and it's comfortable. It doesn't tip over if the screen is opened too far. It even has an honest to god docking station, none of this USB-C dongle nonsense. It maxes out at a mind-blowing 90 Watts of power. Which is a blessing after having my wrists burned by my modern all metal laptop with the latest whizbang nvidia 48000000 GPU.

Yeah it's old and slow. It only has four cores and 16GB of RAM and a positively prehistoric GPU, but I love it dearly and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Similarly here, that is what made me leave the "Year of Desktop Linux" behind, and re-focus on Windows as the main OS.

2004 was good too, minus the malware which at the time was really bad.

Was 2004 the peak of the blogger wave?

the adware back then that could install itself into your browser was insane! hello adaware, avast, and malwarebytes.

BonziBuddy

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