That's probably a fair observation. Windows 2000 came out before Windows ME, so it you had just a slight interest in computers, you'd try it out and after that Windows 98 and even ME felt like a downgrade, so you'd stay on 2000. I remember getting an beta release of Windows 2000 in late December 1999 and that was basically it, every other version of Windows since then, even XP was a downgrade.
XP was the first Windows that had BOTH support for all “home windows” APIs AND the multi-user NT kernel (windows 95/98/me didn’t truly have a concept of user ownership of files outside the context of network file shares, for example)
I don't dispute that Microsoft used DirectX support to push XP sales, but I played at least Quake and Half-Life on NT4, and Unreal Tournament and StarCraft on W2k.
So you’d REALLY have to be into the OS scene to look it up, or care enough to buy it.
Yeaah, we didn't necessarily pay back then.
No, for music Napster was really what showed what the internet could offer but CD burners couldn't.
At the time, the way operating systems were advertised was in trade/enthusiast publications or the occasional tech article within a news publication or campaigns within stores. There weren’t prompts in the OS to upgrade, and most people didn’t think about their OS beyond what came factory installed. Each of the above required people to go out of their way to even know new OS versions were out unless they were enthusiasts.