I don't quite remember it being that bad, but yes, XP was plagued with instability at first, and there were also some complaints about UI changes (although they weren't as breaking as those in Vista).
I think you might be on to something here. People tend to forget, but the web remembers. When XP came around, the web was much smaller. You won't find so many articles about the problems people had with XP early on. But you will find tons of articles about the problems people had with Vista (at a point in time when XP was already stable and mature). And so this "XP great Vista crap" thing tends to perpetuate.
Then again... everyone seems to "remember" that WinME is garbage and Win98SE is great, even though that happened before XP. So maybe my theory is incomplete. 🤣
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