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Comment by langsoul-com | Hacker News Reader

Was it really that bad back in 2003?

It really was. XP gets looked back on with rose-tinted glasses but only because successive iterations of windows have been so extraordinarily bad. The Microsoft.com website was so bad it was almost comical.

To Microsoft's credit, they have made some improvements in some areas but the same old DNA is on display when you use e.g. Teams.

Microsoft is just plain bad at Product.

Their web stuff is still awful.

Trying to sign in to email? Let me take 10 seconds redirecting you across 5 different domains

Did it improve? Honest question as I haven't touched Windows since the late 90s because it was terrible (I went from Basic booting home computers to DOS to Unix to Linux and Mac OS X; I use mostly Linux still).

I just bought a Dell with blank-slate Windows 10 install. Windows Update came up on first boot. Most of the things billg said in this 2003 email remain true. e.g.

> This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

(But it was GB of stuff.)

> Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

(But it was more than 10 minutes multiple times.)

> Then it told me to reboot my machine.

(Probably six reboots after 5 software updates.)

… and once that was done, it started harassing me to install Windows 11. “Harassing” like full screen takeovers with buried “no thanks” buttons and secondary “ARE YOU SURE?” screens once I found and clicked the close buttons. That hasn’t stopped.

I had this with the added bonus that it deemed my machine not good enough to install W11 on. So it would scream at me to "upgrade" Windows and then reject any attempt to do so.

I installed Linux, now that Proton means all my games work anyway.

This is why I go with Fedora Silverblue for my elderly family. When they had Windows installed, most support calls was about crazy and confusing full screen pop ups and forced upgrades.

With a stable disto, everything just works and keeps up to date without bothering the user.

Why anyone uses Windows today is a mystery to me. My guess is force of habit and lock-inn effects.

Online games don’t run on Proton.

It's weird, because for me XP was really the high point. I don't think I ever used the site they're discussing, but XP itself had a nice consistent UX that I was happy to use. A couple of years I ago I tried out windows for my main Dev environment for nearly 2 years and completely regretted it. What a disaster it is.

Pretty much yeah, by service pack 2 they'd sorted most of it. SP3 was almost good. As far as I was concerned Windows 2000 was the superior choice till well into the XP life cycle. And XP was definitely the better choice till 7.

There isn't a dumpster rotten enough for ME, Vista, or 8.

> There isn't a dumpster rotten enough for ME, Vista, or 8.

Vista was pretty good after SP2, so was Windows 8.1. In fact I find 8.1 (with StartIsBack installed) much better than the adware mess that's Windows 10.

What most people don't know is that vista was not all that different from 7. As you mention after SP fixed the bugs. The main issue was hardware requirements were quite hefty with all the new stuff and people put it on 2gb ram laptops with 5400rpm disks.

In any case the issues got much worse with 10 and now even worse with 11. The os itself is not good but it is what it is. Now the invasive trash happening lately is truly bad and should be enough to move people away. Seems there is not much of an effect so they will keep pushing.

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