95DosBox wrote:

Vista and W7 are memory hogs compared to XP.

This, especially the 'and W7' part.
Vista took the fall for the higher system requirements of this 'new generation' of Windows OSes.
Windows 7 was no better, but nobody complained about that. And even today, as we see in this thread for example, people complain about Vista for being resource-hungry, but Windows 7 gets a free pass.

I've always found it quite ironic that people make it sound like Vista is one of the worst versions of Windows ever, and Windows 7 is one of the best.
In reality, Vista and Windows 7 are very close together, and you're not too far from the truth if you say that Windows 7 is 'Vista SP3'.

Until recently, there was very little that Vista couldn't do, which Windows 7 can. Today, things are skewed somewhat because Vista is EOL, and most vendors no longer bother to support their software and hardware on Vista anymore. Windows 7 will reach that point in the near future as well, and in fact, already there are quite a few things you can't do on Windows 7 today... For example, you won't get DirectX 12, and some newer software from Microsoft, such as the newer Visual Studios, don't work on Windows 7 either (which at least makes some sense, since they can also target the Universal Windows Platform, which isn't present in Windows 7 in the first place. And by extension you also can't develop for Windows phones, tablets and related devices on Windows 7).

I suppose we should also mention WIndows 8/8.1 here. They are similar to Vista/Windows 7, in the sense that Windows 8 brought some new technology (start of the UWP and Phone/Tablet support), but Windows 10 did it in a more refined and widely accepted way.
Windows 8 is now unsupported as well. But since Windows 10 was a free upgrade from Windows 8, I don't think many people were all that bothered. In fact, the first version of Windows 10 is also EOL already. Microsoft is moving more quickly these days. Let people upgrade for free, but get them to upgrade more quickly, so you don't have to support outdated/buggy OSes until the end of time.
Sadly, not all software developers can keep up with that... My laptop from work gets stuck on upgrading Windows 10 to the Creators Update at 32%. This is most probably because of F-Secure being installed, which has some nasty bugs.

Scali wrote:

Windows 7 was no better, but nobody complained about that. And even today, as we see in this thread for example, people complain about Vista for being resource-hungry, but Windows 7 gets a free pass

Windows 7 did bring some optimizations for increased UI responsiveness. At least Microsoft talked at length about it.

Scali wrote:

I've always found it quite ironic that people make it sound like Vista is one of the worst versions of Windows ever, and Windows 7 is one of the best.
In reality, Vista and Windows 7 are very close together, and you're not too far from the truth if you say that Windows 7 is 'Vista SP3'.

People in general have no patience/skill/interest to research and understand things. They stick by their first impressions (or more likely, collective first impressions of others). Read my Daikatana vs Quake II write-up if you want another example.

Scali wrote:

Until recently, there was very little that Vista couldn't do, which Windows 7 can. Today, things are skewed somewhat because Vista is EOL, and most vendors no longer bother to support their software and hardware on Vista anymore. Windows 7 will reach that point in the near future as well

Not quite so. Win7 is supported until early 2020, and given its popularity it is more likely that vendors will try to support it for as long as possible, versus as little as possible as was with Vista.

Furthermore, because of the technology it got, Win7 will forever be able to run IE11, Office 2013/2016, Visual Studio 2012/2015, and everything derived from it. That's half a decade of SW stack support more than Vista has (latest versions that run on Vista are 2010).

Scali wrote:

Windows 8 is now unsupported as well. But since Windows 10 was a free upgrade from Windows 8, I don't think many people were all that bothered. In fact, the first version of Windows 10 is also EOL already. Microsoft is moving more quickly these days.

Win8 is unsupported because it was superseded by Win8.1.Win8.1 is still supported. In essence, Microsoft treated it like a service pack. Once a service pack comes out, the previous patch level goes out of support quickly. In the same way as Win7 pre-SP1 or Vista pre-SP2 have been unsupported for a while.

dr_st wrote:

Windows 7 did bring some optimizations for increased UI responsiveness. At least Microsoft talked at length about it.

Yup, but that was mostly marketing, and the public ate it up.
The difference in everyday use was barely noticeable, if at all.

dr_st wrote:

Win8 is unsupported because it was superseded by Win8.1.Win8.1 is still supported. In essence, Microsoft treated it like a service pack. Once a service pack comes out, the previous patch level goes out of support quickly. In the same way as Win7 pre-SP1 or Vista pre-SP2 have been unsupported for a while.

I was talking about all versions of Windows 8, so '8.x' basically.
Win 8.1 can't do a lot of things that Windows 10 can, which makes it fall by the wayside quickly. In fact, Windows 8.x never really received much support for their Store Apps, if at all. Windows 10 UWP is taking off considerably better, with for example various AAA game titles having UWP support, such as Tomb Raider, and engines like Unity supporting UWP out-of-the-box.
But, they aren't backward-compatible, which puts Windows 8.x in a similar position as Vista: It sorta has the same technology as later OSes, and it sorta could do the exact same thing, but its particular flavour is not supported by software/hardware.
It's mostly artificial, same with Vista. If MS had wanted, they could have made IE11, Office, Visual Studio and whatnot run on Vista just fine. They just want you to upgrade, so they don't.
After all, Vista has support for Aero, DX11 and all that jazz. Why wouldn't it be able to run most apps that Windows 7 does?
At least with XP, it wasn't artificial. It was actually an outdated platform, which didn't have Aero, DX10+ etc.

Scali wrote:

Win 8.1 can't do a lot of things that Windows 10 can, which makes it fall by the wayside quickly. In fact, Windows 8.x never really received much support for their Store Apps, if at all. Windows 10 UWP is taking off considerably better, with for example various AAA game titles having UWP support, such as Tomb Raider, and engines like Unity supporting UWP out-of-the-box.
But, they aren't backward-compatible, which puts Windows 8.x in a similar position as Vista: It sorta has the same technology as later OSes, and it sorta could do the exact same thing, but its particular flavour is not supported by software/hardware.

I see. So perhaps in terms of UWP, 8.1 will be falling behind quickly. In terms of core OS support, though, Microsoft will honor its product lifecycles, I am sure of that.

Scali wrote:

It's mostly artificial, same with Vista. If MS had wanted, they could have made IE11, Office, Visual Studio and whatnot run on Vista just fine. They just want you to upgrade, so they don't.
After all, Vista has support for Aero, DX11 and all that jazz. Why wouldn't it be able to run most apps that Windows 7 does?
At least with XP, it wasn't artificial. It was actually an outdated platform, which didn't have Aero, DX10+ etc.

You are preaching to the choir here, I know all that. And I like Vista myself. 😀 But whatever the reasons, the situation is that Microsoft chose to do whatever they did, and it's not going to change.

Although I do wonder, if eventually, maybe years down the road we'll see some unofficial "KernelEx" stuff from the community, that will patch Vista to add support to all these core MS technologies, and bring SW compatibility to the level of Win7. Probably not, though. I cannot see enough people actively wanting to keep using Vista like people wanted to keep using Win98...

dr_st wrote:

In terms of core OS support, though, Microsoft will honor its product lifecycles, I am sure of that.

Depends on what you mean by 'support'.
Because a few posts above, things like IE11, Office and Visual Studio were mentioned. These are not the OS itself, but standalone applications.
And that's the important difference here:
The OS may be in the 'support lifecycle' in the sense that MS actively fixes bugs and releases patches. But that does not guarantee that all new applications that MS launches will still support that OS as well.
Likewise, many third-party vendors stopped support for less popular OSes such as XP x64 and Vista long before the OS itself was EOL.

dr_st wrote:

Although I do wonder, if eventually, maybe years down the road we'll see some unofficial "KernelEx" stuff from the community, that will patch Vista to add support to all these core MS technologies, and bring SW compatibility to the level of Win7. Probably not, though. I cannot see enough people actively wanting to keep using Vista like people wanted to keep using Win98...

I don't think so, because Vista + 'KernelEx' would effectively be Windows 7.
The reason why people wanted KernelEx for Win9x is because 9x is an entirely different bloodline, and there are a number of applications that only work properly on 9x.
KernelEx then allows you to run newer software that is not specifically targeted to 9x, such as web browsers, which make it easier to go online with your 9x machine, and download software etc.

For Vista I would see no such use-case.

Scali wrote:

Depends on what you mean by 'support'. Because a few posts above, things like IE11, Office and Visual Studio were mentioned. The […]
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Depends on what you mean by 'support'.
Because a few posts above, things like IE11, Office and Visual Studio were mentioned. These are not the OS itself, but standalone applications.
And that's the important difference here:
The OS may be in the 'support lifecycle' in the sense that MS actively fixes bugs and releases patches. But that does not guarantee that all new applications that MS launches will still support that OS as well.

Microsoft gives 5 years of mainstream support + 5 years of extended support (counted from the most recent service pack release date). During mainstream support it will add new features. During extended support it will only fix bugs.

Microsoft considers IE part of the OS (and it really is kind of integrated). Office and Visual Studio are not part of the OS but they rely on some core frameworks that are. For example, VS12+ and Office 2013+ both use the flat window UI that debuted with Win8, in August 2012. By then Vista was out of mainstream support, so MS did not bother porting it back to it, but it did port it to Win7.

dr_st wrote:

Microsoft gives 5 years of mainstream support + 5 years of extended support (counted from the most recent service pack release date). During mainstream support it will add new features. During extended support it will only fix bugs.

But the point is: that is about the OS, and the OS alone. It is no guarantee that their other products will be supported on that OS as well.

dr_st wrote:

By then Vista was out of mainstream support, so MS did not bother porting it back to it, but it did port it to Win7.

That doesn't make sense, since Vista and Win7 use essentially the same UI framework (Aero).
They also both have support for the .NET WPF framework (in fact, even XP does). And they both support DirectX 11, including Direct2D and DirectWrite.
It would be no more difficult to make it work on Vista than it is to make it work on Windows 7.
Which is my entire point: it is arbitrary.

gdjacobs wrote:

95DosBox wrote:

Vista SP2 with DX11 runs perfectly smooth and fine on a quadcore Z77.

Am I the only one who sometimes finds it outrageous that we normalize this? There was a time not long ago where the equivalent computing power of NASA or the NSA was the same as can now be purchased in the form of your Z77/Core i5 which is now apparently the standard platform for all our banal tasks. We've also rationalized away the inefficiency of modern operating systems as some measure of progress.

Compositing is a good thing, but it shouldn't have presented such a performance problem even for basic integrated graphics accelerators. What else did Vista bring to the table that required and was worth such a cost in computing power?

Yeah it does seem out of place to say hey Vista works great today on quad cores when unicores were still struggling a bit with XP and limited memory. But I think the only true benefit that Vista brought at that time was a mainstream 64-bit OS. I never quite jumped onboard to Vista or W7 even today I only had to use W10 recently for DVRing troubleshooting because the software didn't work on Windows Vista and Windows 7. When I figured out how to get it working on Windows 10 I just went backwards and retested it on Vista and Windows 7. Vista still couldn't do it and Windows 7 had no issues but I had look for a much older version of their software since they apparently updated the software to use Windows 10 Library files. Luckily I found a much older version when it supported Windows 7 but even that version doesn't work with Vista. That's the dilemma today. Vista was looked upon as the ugly duckling for so long until Windows 7 came along and stole its thunder. And in my opinion if they had at least kept that wonderful QuickLaunch interface and Classic Windows theme in place I would have adored Windows 7 from the start. Anyhow, I'm typing this on XP so just because I could run Vista and W7 on this other quad core machine I have it doesn't mean I need it. 😀

But going back further you are correct that even going back to say the Windows 3.1 days and maybe 98 days we already had powerful enough computers for most every day tasks that it didn't need to keep going. I still prefer Word 6.0 and Excel from Win 3.1 which was so compact and efficient compared to today's bloated Office 2016. But if we had become stagnant and complacent and MS and Intel didn't try to screw us over and force us to upgrade we wouldn't be where we are today with 64-bit CPUs and install over 64GB on our motherboards while still running an ancient OS like 98 or XP on it to give them the finger.

I think the main driver of all this technological advancement is due to gaming and video editing. Those hard core enthusiasts demand the server class X99 motherboards and quad video cards with super water cooling. Without those supposedly insanely rich folks to push the limits we'd still be typing on 486 systems on BBSs over dial up modems. I do miss that 56K V90 sonar connection tone.

dr_st wrote:

Scali wrote:

Although I do wonder, if eventually, maybe years down the road we'll see some unofficial "KernelEx" stuff from the community, that will patch Vista to add support to all these core MS technologies, and bring SW compatibility to the level of Win7. Probably not, though. I cannot see enough people actively wanting to keep using Vista like people wanted to keep using Win98...

I'd like to see something like that for Vista but in this day and age it's like trying to make Windows 2000 run XP SP3 programs and I don't think as you said there is enough of a momentum out there for this even if we wanted it. It would be a real killer OS if MS had created Intel xHCI USB 3.0 drivers for Vista and would have stolen any chance W7 would have been as great as it is today because for the most part they were on the surface nearly identical except for that one feature. If a special update could make Vista run W7 SP1 and W10 programs with DX12 and include xHCI USB 3.0 driver support it would actually be a major threat to Windows 10+. Only Microsoft themselves could beat themselves by coming out with a true XP 64-bit reboot successor or maybe an XP 128-bit OS with all the features the classic XP had that made it so great of a user interface.

Scali wrote:

Windows 10 UWP is taking off considerably better, with for example various AAA game titles having UWP support, such as Tomb Raider, and engines like Unity supporting UWP out-of-the-box.

Excuse me but I have to say this; UWP taking off, especially for gaming, is absolute hyperbole. The number of sales per distribution channel for the titles released on UWP is proof enough of this. The Windows Store and UWP is absolute garbage, even more so for games.

95DosBox wrote:

I think the main driver of all this technological advancement is due to gaming and video editing. Those hard core enthusiasts demand the server class X99 motherboards and quad video cards with super water cooling. Without those supposedly insanely rich folks to push the limits we'd still be typing on 486 systems on BBSs over dial up modems. I do miss that 56K V90 sonar connection tone.

I don't debate these applications and the demand they put on performance. They're definitely things that users enjoy and are much more accessible (or even possible) with more up to date hardware. I question the massive footprint required by the OS.

95DosBox wrote:

It would be a real killer OS if MS had created Intel xHCI USB 3.0 drivers for Vista and would have stolen any chance W7 would have been as great as it is today because for the most part they were on the surface nearly identical except for that one feature.

Well, Intel xHCI came rather late into the game, by then W7 was already firmly established. It didn't make sense for Microsoft or Intel to invest in supporting Vista (or XP). And it's not just the xHCI that's not supported - other chipset components will also have drivers missing (for example, the onboard Intel LAN).

That's one of the reasons I generally say - a Windows OS is best run on contemporary hardware; I never tried running Vista on anything newer than Core 2, so I never ran into driver issues. And there are plenty xHCI controllers as PCIe or ExpressCard adapters that have Vista drivers (XP as well). They lose a bit in performance to the Intel integrated one, but still offer a lot of improvement over USB2.

I think I pulled my first multiquote thanks goes to PhilsComputerLab.

dr_st wrote:

Well, Intel xHCI came rather late into the game, by then W7 was already firmly established. It didn't make sense for Microsoft or Intel to invest in supporting Vista (or XP). And it's not just the xHCI that's not supported - other chipset components will also have drivers missing (for example, the onboard Intel LAN).

That's one of the reasons I generally say - a Windows OS is best run on contemporary hardware; I never tried running Vista on anything newer than Core 2, so I never ran into driver issues. And there are plenty xHCI controllers as PCIe or ExpressCard adapters that have Vista drivers (XP as well). They lose a bit in performance to the Intel integrated one, but still offer a lot of improvement over USB2.

xHCI had come in around 2009 from NEC and they also had made XP and Vista drivers while Intel did not. Windows 7 was released in 2009 before xHCI was ready by Intel. If you look at Intel HD graphics drivers they even made XP and Vista drivers for the Z77 chipset which was around 2011-2012 so there was no excuse for Intel not to create XP Intel xHCI drivers which was probably at the time running XP 50% or more dominating most desktops or Vista Intel xHCI drivers since it was already well established since late 2006. They simply (Microsoft and Intel) wanted to kill XP and that was one method while they also knew that Vista had received a bad wrap and wanted to glorify W7 as the true single successor to XP. Now when W7 has finally gotten to the level of XP glorification they tripped on themselves with 8.0 with the Metro UI, then 8.1 trying to back track it, then W10 luring you with hopes of DX12 as being enough despite the tin foil hat tricks. 😲

The Core 2 is still a bit dated but Z77 runs Vista perfectly fine. Z170 also runs Vista as long as the devices like graphics, sound, and USB card have Vista drivers. The main culprit in installing Vista and W7 is the loss of USB 2.0 eHCI support which would have allowed USB bootable installations of both without modding. You can thank Intel for removing that. And USB 3.0 PCIe cards are the only way to go forward for the faster than USB 2.0 speeds but not full USB 3.0 speeds in XP. They are about midway. I'm not sure about Vista and W7 for 3rd party USB 3.0 speeds but they should be about the same but whether they would be slower than the Intel ones I have not tested yet or done any real benchmarks.

gdjacobs wrote:

I don't debate these applications and the demand they put on performance. They're definitely things that users enjoy and are much more accessible (or even possible) with more up to date hardware. I question the massive footprint required by the OS.

True that's probably why I still prefer XP 32-bit which usually falls below 2GB in size compared to Vista or W7 which usually requires 20GB. XP had another secret advantage was that you could install multiple copies of XP onto different partitions. So you could personalize each XP partition copy if you wanted for different purposes with all that space saved from not installing Vista or W7. Windows 98SE used to feel quite tiny vs XP but nothing compares to 64 bit Vista and up.

feipoa wrote:

In my book, XP and Vista aren't "retro" yet. I do not really have much to backup how I define it, but I did notice XP running on the computers at the local hospital. I also noticed a few months ago that the local Canadian Tyre was still using XP point-of-sale. These examples by no means constitute the entirety of my conditions to establish the definition of "retro". For me, ME and W2K are retro. W2K3 is not retro.

I agree with your definition of what didn't qualify as retro yet. However I still feel whatever must be retro still had to have some sort of fan base or reasoning for the nostalgia. The Win ME to me wasn't retro since there wasn't really much love given to that OS and most people hated the fact ME killed off the MS DOS boot mode unless you hacked it. That's what did it for me with ME. Although if ME had some other benefits like supporting up to to 4GB I would definitely have switched to Win ME after hacking the MS DOS boot mode back. As for Windows 2000. Yes this one is pretty close to being classified as the ME of the NT family now since the lack of SATA AHCI Windows 2000 drivers it must and can only be installed using SATA IDE compatibility mode which most Intel SATA controllers on Skylake have removed but only some 3rd party ones still have that mode so it's near death status on modern machines. I'd say in another 5 years Windows 2000 will be just about dead as it will harder to find any more SATA IDE Compatibility mode options on future chipsets. Windows 2000 is a goner and won't be retro since XP stole all its thunder being able to run everything it could and support way more software and hardware.

Win 3.1/95/98 all qualify as retro for different reasons. 3.1 due to it being vintage and the predecessor to 95 being a big jump but 3.1 was still used for the early internet, Word, and Excel and without it the internet wouldn't have started to grow. 95 simply got outdated similar to Windows 2000 was to XP where support went to the latter. 98 is retro now due to the max memory issue made it pretty much impossible to install on DDR4 motherboards since the smallest memory capacity is beyond 1GB. You'll need to hack and use all sorts of tricks to get it to work. But the main reason 98 takes the retro award is all those games and software it accumulated from early Windows 1.0-3.1, 95, and 98 days. DOS is the other full retro in my book although DOSBOX did bring some of that functionality back on modern OSs but still a majority of Non DOS bootable titles exist that can't be run on it. Loss of actual ISA slots was a big factor for that special Sound Card and MIDI authenticity that DOSBOX can't quite fully emulate 100%.

Next coming up might be XP in 5-10 years but if Intel does something drastic again to make it more incompatible I'm going to keep hacking at it so people can still use XP as long as possible so it may never achieve full retro OS status until that day comes however the massive XP software library should be considered retro even if the OS isn't quite there yet. 😘

Here's how I look at it.

Win7 outdated.
Vista old and out datated.
Xp old and outdated but not yet retro.

Personally I hate Xp. And I'm no fan of 7 but I'll use 7. XP on the other hand will not use.
I still use vista on my daily systems with is certainly a dual 1366 system.

Just because something is not supported doesn't mean it's retro
If that was the case my daily system with has 48gb of ram 2 3.6ghz quads and 6 older 120gb ssds running vista would be retro.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Here's how I look at it. […]
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Here's how I look at it.

Win7 outdated.
Vista old and out datated.
Xp old and outdated but not yet retro.

Personally I hate Xp. And I'm no fan of 7 but I'll use 7. XP on the other hand will not use.
I still use vista on my daily systems with is certainly a dual 1366 system.

Just because something is not supported doesn't mean it's retro
If that was the case my daily system with has 48gb of ram 2 3.6ghz quads and 6 older 120gb ssds running vista would be retro.

Yeah support has nothing to do with retro or else XP would be considered retro in 2007 but got extended multiple times due to popularity. If you liked Vista then there shouldn't be any reason you disliked XP unless you were an Aero user? Try both XP and Vista in Display Properties - Theme - Windows Classic, under Prformance options got to Visual Effects - Adjust for best performance. Taskbar - Show Quick Launch, Uncheck Group Similar Task Bar Buttons, Change Start Menu to Classic Start Menu. You do just these few steps XP will be purring on a quadcore system and make Vista bat at eye at you. 😉

Overall Windows 2000 Professional had the cleanest sleekest Windows Classic user interface but sadly it had less software support which killed it. If it could do everything XP SP3/SP4 could it would have reigned supreme.

I actually used Vista in this 'Classic' mode for the first couple of years, and then I realized that I like the way Aero looks. 😀 Additionally I installed Classic Shell, so I can have both classic and modern start menus accessible (not that I use either much).

dr_st wrote:

I actually used Vista in this 'Classic' mode for the first couple of years, and then I realized that I like the way Aero looks. 😀 Additionally I installed Classic Shell, so I can have both classic and modern start menus accessible (not that I use either much).

Couldn't say I ever used Aero much... "respect". I still think it had the most beautiful use of colors. I think it looked better than both XP and W7 and definitely W10 from the outside. Maybe if they had toned down the graphics as the default installation setting to the Windows Classic mode it might have been a success and then down the road when computers caught up people would play around with Aero and the other special eye candy just fine on their quad cores. 😉 Most people were using these on unicore systems with 1/20th the memory requirements which made it feel like a turtle of an OS. I remember using it once on a P4 and I said no thanks and gladly went back to 98/2K/XP. The boot time was horrendous in those days. Today I love it vs W7/W10 only from a user interface stand point. Today from a functionality standpoint with most software compatibility it falls way short. If only there were a W7 SP1 patch compatibility with DX12 and Intel USB 3.0 xHCI support from the start it would be loved like no other OS except XP 32bit and 98SE.

Do I sense here that people think that Aero == eye candy == slower?
On the contrary: Unlike the classic UI, Aero uses DirectX9 to accelerate the UI. The 'eye candy' stuff is just standard shader stuff that the GPU can execute 'for free' on even the most minimal of DX9-compatible GPUs.
Aside from that, because it uses DX9, it renders all windows to their own textures. This has some advantages, including:
1) It can easily scale and re-render the window anywhere on the screen, eg the 'popup' you get when you mouse-over on the taskbar is basically 'free': it just renders the same window texture on a different part of the screen, it doesn't have to redraw the whole window. Likewise, it is cheap to do the alt-tab task switching stuff.
2) Overlapping windows can now be handled in hardware using the z-buffer.
3) Because every window is drawn into its own texture, overlapping windows do not actually erase the contents of the windows below, and no redrawing is required, unlike classic mode.

All in all, Aero is actually considerably faster and more efficient than classic UI. A clear case of making the most of advances in hardware. Texturing, z-buffering and shaders are basically 'free' on a GPU. The classic way of drawing things directly to the frontbuffer, and just redrawing everything all the time by keeping track of the overdraw with 'dirty rectangles' stems from the era when video ram was scarce and things like hardware z-buffering were still decades from being a reality.

Just because it made sense to do it that way back in the 1980s doesn't mean it is still the best way today.

Scali wrote:

Do I sense here that people think that Aero == eye candy == slower? On the contrary: Unlike the classic UI, Aero uses DirectX9 t […]
Show full quote

Do I sense here that people think that Aero == eye candy == slower?
On the contrary: Unlike the classic UI, Aero uses DirectX9 to accelerate the UI. The 'eye candy' stuff is just standard shader stuff that the GPU can execute 'for free' on even the most minimal of DX9-compatible GPUs.
Aside from that, because it uses DX9, it renders all windows to their own textures. This has some advantages, including:
1) It can easily scale and re-render the window anywhere on the screen, eg the 'popup' you get when you mouse-over on the taskbar is basically 'free': it just renders the same window texture on a different part of the screen, it doesn't have to redraw the whole window. Likewise, it is cheap to do the alt-tab task switching stuff.
2) Overlapping windows can now be handled in hardware using the z-buffer.
3) Because every window is drawn into its own texture, overlapping windows do not actually erase the contents of the windows below, and no redrawing is required, unlike classic mode.

All in all, Aero is actually considerably faster and more efficient than classic UI. A clear case of making the most of advances in hardware. Texturing, z-buffering and shaders are basically 'free' on a GPU. The classic way of drawing things directly to the frontbuffer, and just redrawing everything all the time by keeping track of the overdraw with 'dirty rectangles' stems from the era when video ram was scarce and things like hardware z-buffering were still decades from being a reality.

Just because it made sense to do it that way back in the 1980s doesn't mean it is still the best way today.

I think what made it slow was all that extra bloat. It was about 10 times the size of XP installed. Sounds like I should spend some time using Aero but the Classic interface is basically the snappiest (2nd) in XP and Vista. Windows 2000 had the fastest user interface of all but maybe 98SE might have a slight edge today. There was even one more program that you could install on 2K that allowed you to reduce the delay time of windows popping up making it super responsive. The biggest plus was the Quick Launch and the Clear Desktop icon. Without that using Windows is a bit aggravating. W7 moved the Clear Desktop icon to the bottom right instead of next to the Start Button because they removed Quick Launch entirely as an option. I remember spending the time to try and hack it back but it still was not exactly the same. Pin to Taskbar was a bad idea. The Quick Launch icons could be customized more and weren't taking as much space. This is why Vista had the best 64-bit user interface next to XP for me. Others may prefer the default XP mode which I couldn't stand. Even in W7 there is a huge gap when clicking on the Start Button reserved I assume for most used programs location. Too much jarring stuff in W7 to me were just gimmicks. I also disliked a new feature they added if you move a window too far to the border it snaps it and sometimes I am moving the Window so I can see the other windows properly when multitasking. Windows 10 went too far and reminds me of the Windows Phone OS. The Windows 8 Beta was interesting but it felt like they were making your desktop into a Browser with current news/events always popping up for you to read.

95DosBox wrote:

I think what made it slow was all that extra bloat. It was about 10 times the size of XP installed.

That only makes it slower if your machine doesn't have the disk space and memory to cope with that. As long as you're in the 'safe zone', you don't notice.
The same goes for XP... It was much slower than its predecessors on machines with less than say 512 MB. But once you had 512 MB or more, it ran fine.

95DosBox wrote:

Sounds like I should spend some time using Aero but the Classic interface is basically the snappiest (2nd) in XP and Vista.

Not sure what you mean by 'snappiest', but Aero is simply faster with things like rendering text and drawing controls etc.
If you mean that the fancy animations in Aero feel like you're being slowed down, yea I suppose. But I guess like with XP, you can tweak those to run faster or just disable them altogether.
What I like best about Aero is that everything is v-synced and double-buffered: You get no 'tearing' or other garbage when moving windows around. Everything moves around smoothly and without drawing artifacts.
In classic mode you actually erase the screen if you drag a window over it, and you can see it redrawing.

Dismissing Aero as a problem because "DX9 hardware acceleration lolz" is just not getting the issue. If you ran Windows Vista on a single core system with an integrated GPU of the era, you would know what it was like to suffer Vista's UI issues. If you didn't, it's really not worth trying to explain. Today, we take 3d acceleration for the desktop for granted. To put things in perspective, back in 2006 Pentium Northwood and Athlon 64 were king. Pentium D and Athlon 64 X2 were the new hotness and Vista kind of sucked at leveraging multiple cores. It was the pre-tablet era, cheap laptops were taking off big time and Intel IGPs were EVERYWHERE and they sucked at EVERYTHING. Vista was simply not a product that the market needed at the time, just like Windows 8 wasn't. Vista was ahead of its time, but not always in good ways. It also didn't help that Vista's aero did not really set it aside from XP's candybar shell significantly enough aside from a color palette swap, that's why MS revamped the whole start menu and taskbar in Windows 7 for good or for worse.

To be fair, I'm quite at home in Windows 7 and like Windows 7 Aero but there are times I wish I could use the Windows Vista shell with the Windows 7 kernel..