[Koshkin]

> there being negative sentiment about XP

I, on the other hand, clearly remember a huge wave of disgust and resentment towards XP right after it came out. Slow and bloated, with hideous, gimmicky visuals, it had been an object of all kinds of ridicule and criticisms by "sophisticated" computer users.

[iso1631]

I think people were happy with NT4, 2000, Windows 95, and possibly Windows 98 as it had a fair number of technical improvements over Vanilla 95 (OSR2 brought in support for >2G drives for example but it wasn't until 98 you could use it properly)

From memory XP was the first "phone home" windows version which required some form of online registration. I stopped using windows at home or admining it around then.

[vbezhenar]

You can't be happy with 95 or 98. They were terrible. NT4 was nice though.

[iso1631]

95 compared with dos and 3.11 for workgroups. NT4 was great for businesses, you couldn't play Red Alert on it though.