XP is Microsoft's prettiest OS by far.
To me Windows 95/NT 4 is still the gold standard in Windows UI. It's certainly not the prettiest, that would be Windows 2000, but it was easy to use, easy to navigate and efficient with space.
I eventually got used to it and ended up liking it.
For awhile I ran XP 64-bit though, that did do one thing 2000 couldn't do.
i kinda miss xp at a cultural level since it was a bit the end of that computing culture cycle (after that apple started to dominate and ubuiquitous computing influenced desktop ui)
When did Apple dominate? I'm not trying to hate on Apple here, but there's this weird belief that Apple have had a lead in personal computer OS market share at some point in the last few decades, and it isn't really true since about 1984.
You can argue that they should dominate, but that doesn't seem to have happened.
I had tons of "Visual Styles" back then and in the last XP days I opted for grayish Royal or Royale. It's such shame that MS has abandoned Watercolor theme - that was a middle ground: interface was updated and yet, still similar to classic design. And it was even in some elements flat before that style become a dominant. Luckily we're slowly moving away from that and I won't be missing it.
>During the Luna studies, that people’s reaction to Luna was often, “Wow this would be a great UI for X,” where X was “my dad” or “my employees” or “my daughter”. People didn’t look at it as the UI for themselves; rather, they thought it was a great UI for somebody else.
(Luna is the name of the default look of Windows XP)
It's all been downhill from there as far as UX goes.
Its Vista. Like it or hate it. It’s Vista