http://hs.windows.microsoft.com/resbox/en/6.2/main/9f04b9c9-...
It's not the exact design you describe: The slider is there, but only the label of the selected option is shown, the other options are only represented as tick marks.
I think there are two problems with the design though, (which would also still be there if all labels were shown):
- The slider widget back then was normally used for selecting continuous numeric or at least interval scaled input values: That's what the mechanism of dragging it with the mouse was developed for. It could be configured with a small number of discrete values as options, but then dragging became awkward: Either the ticks were spaced very far, then you had to drag the cursor a long distance before there was any kind of visual feedback at all - or the ticks were spaced closely, like here, but then dragging the slider to one specific tick became difficult.
- It's possible to click the slider, but there is no visual indication that you can do so. In fact, the visual indicators are almost inverse to how you'd need them: The selected option has a big handle that you can not click (only drag), the unselected options have no handle though you can actually click on the empty slider bar to move the handle in that direction.
I guess that's why they never did this again after this one try - which is sort of a pity, because you could probably build a redesigned slider widget optimized for discrete input that solved those problems.