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by eyelidlessness 1276 days ago
Win2K was the only version of Windows I ever ran as a daily driver. I had access to Macs from an early age (since System 7 and through all the processor architecture transitions, except I haven’t gotten an M-series yet), but sold my Mac and couldn’t afford a replacement for some time around the XP transition.

My completely unqualified ranking…

- 2k: excellent, top Windows

- XP: fine, if you turn off all the UI changes, but not appealing over 2k in any way I can recall

- Vista: didn’t use it, but I think it got a bad rep for efforts that should’ve been lauded

- 7: good enough, mostly didn’t suck for web compatibility testing

- 8: I’m one of the weirdos who found it very compelling… but not enough to actually use it. I’m sure it was as bad in practice as everyone who used it thinks, but I really appreciated the bold attempt at a UI for any device. And I’d been very taken by earlier Metro.

- 10: seemed like a perfectly reasonable reversion to evolving 7, but also seemed like it got weirder and worse as they dug into no new versions.

- 11: new version doesn’t seem to have improved things on that front.

- 3.x-98: I didn’t like them, but objectively they were probably just as good as their contemporary Mac offerings just catering to different markets

- ME: lol why even did this exist

3 comments

> - ME: lol why even did this exist

To get Internet Explorer 5.5 deployed as widely as possible which was their strategy pre-DOJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application

Extra lulz. I understood ME to be a stopgap in the NT transition, where 2k was supposed to be the consumer/corporate merge but that was delayed til XP for reasons… I think drivers? But of course there was IE strategy.

Maybe I’m just softening because I haven’t had to deal with IE for so long, but I really do think it’s an incredible achievement that MS transitioned Windows with as little disruption as they did, with all sorts of good and bad incentives. It’s a wonder Windows even still works, much less keeping such a large majority of install base. Obviously it’s not my favorite software in the world, but I’m thoroughly impressed with what the devs have pulled off through a cartoonish timeline of priority shifts with unbelievable backcompat expectations.

- 3.x was just a GUI for MS-DOS.

- 95/98 are a OS on their own although still having quite some old DOS code in there.

All others versions are following the NT tree.

NT 4.0 for non-x86 hardware deserves a honorable mention despite the fact i'm absolutely not a Microsoft fan. It was quite impressive during it's time, but hardly to be seen anywhere.

It feels unfair to lump in 3.x with 98, and you've skipped the (at the time groundbreaking) 95!
I lumped 95 in too! Though I should have used my handy en-dash and consistent formatting of the 3.x–9x (i.e. not NT, not ME, more than a word processor).

I agree 95 was a huge step relatively, but agree it was ~on par with my preferred Mac contemporary. Granted it does deserve mention for licensing music by Brian Eno… and a button licensed by another famous musician.