WolverineDK wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

I actually used to like Windows XP quite a lot, but because you can't activate it anymore and you will end up in an activation loop, it's now a useless POS. I don't have it installed on any old pc.

Well as dr_st you do not have to, if you have the right OEM or VLK, but again there are ways around bypassing the XP activation.

^This.

I happen to have an original VLK disk. I didn't steel it or anything 🤣

Btw, I did try out Win2003 (can't remember the exact version) and it was kinda like a leaner WinXP. I liked it a lot, but that rig at some point got dismantled and I lost some of the stuff afterwards.

I really liked Windows 2000. It always seemed like a leaner version of XP and without the hassle of online activation.

I liked Windows 3.x, especially when you added all the extra goodies. I also really liked NT4, and to a lesser extent 2000. I like to dual boot NT4 and DOS/Win3 on my retro systems (if they are up to the task).

BinaryDemon wrote:

I really liked Windows 2000. It always seemed like a leaner version of XP and without the hassle of online activation.

fisher price!

Procyon wrote:

I have no favourite, I just use it because of necessity to run software (games mostly).

That is the purpose of an operating system or any Windows, right? To run software?

Tetrium wrote:

WolverineDK wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

Btw, I did try out Win2003 (can't remember the exact version) and it was kinda like a leaner WinXP.

Win2003... as in Server 2003? Not often you hear someone say the server version of an OS is lighter than the client. Unless you were talking about something else going by that name in which case never mind, carry on.

Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs on the other hand, now that is a cut down version of XP with somewhat lower requirements. If you have't experienced it yet don't worry, your not missing much.

Windows XP Pro.

I've started to use Windows XP in 2017 to play games in my 'new' retro PC (now P4 PressHot).
Previously I used for short time Windows 10, in 2015 I think.
And before of this and till 2005 only PCs with Linux.
At the end of the past century Windows 2000 was my main PC.

Because of this path now I'm discovering a new world of Windows PC games 🤣

From my point of view Windows XP in 32bit hardware with mid to high components are the perfect combination to play all type of games.

For me these days it would be these actually installed:

- 10 because apart from a few glitches it basically just works and runs all my newish software
- 98 or 98SE for older stuff
- XP just in case I need it, but not sure why I would [probably why it just sits unused]

Back in the day I really liked 2000. And 95 before that. Find it hard going back to either now.

Always hated 3.1/3.11/etc even when they were new, I was a DOS user from 1985/6...

Had a fling with 7 and then made the mistake of upgrading to 8 [ugh], and a retro trial of Vista which was surprisingly good, but 10 covers all those bases now.

Never had ME.

Started on Win 3.0, then later upgraded to Win 3.1. I have fond memories from back then, but I don't miss them much now. Neat to load and say "ah yeah, I remember this." But not much else.

Win 95 changed my world view though. I guess I was at the right impressionable age, because the release excitement felt huge. I got hold of a beta via a BBS (apparently they weren't authorized to distribute it -- who knew??) and was SO impressed by how ... different it felt to DOS / Win 3.x. I still love Win 95.

I tried 98 FE once, and it failed so hard that I pretty much skipped 98 entirely.

Win ME worked really well on my PC back in the day, and so I used it for a few years. Quite enjoyed it, but then fell in love with BeOS and reverted to Windows only when necessary (games, SB Live stuff, other special software).

I tried Win 2K but didn't have enough horsepower for it. Sluggish. Poor driver support for consumer hardware, at first. Went back to ME.

When XP came out, I had the "Fisher Price" reaction as well. Oh look, computers are made for dumb people now. .... but I did kind of like the clean, white menus. And the plastic didn't really look so bad. Nice wallpapers. Boots fast! It's really stable. And, before I knew it, I was an XP fan.

Vista got the same bum rap as 2K. Installed on a P4 with not enough memory to really get a fair shake. Decided to skip it.

Win 7 was surprisingly lean, having been gutted of all the cruft in the source code over the past few years. I gradually became a Linux guy, then a Mac OS guy, but still like Win 7. I have a couple Win 7 PCs at home, and a VM on my Mac.

Tried Win 8 once. Sucked.

I tried Win 10 both as a VM and standalone. It did NOT seem fully baked yet, and I hated the dichotomy of "old Windows" and "new Windows meant for a touchscreen you don't have", where the dividing line seemed to be arbitrary -- like they just never got around to revamping the dialog boxes. It felt like a new coat of paint on an old junk drawer. Plus, I can't get over the dialog text. All the words are small so you can understand what they mean, but the underlying message is really obfusc... I mean, not very clear, so you can't again.

I have fond memories of windows 3.11 wfw and windows 95. But I also really love windows 2k, XP pro 32 and 64 bit, and windows 7 ultimate 64 bit.

ratfink wrote:

For me these days it would be these actually installed: […]
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For me these days it would be these actually installed:

- 10 because apart from a few glitches it basically just works and runs all my newish software
- 98 or 98SE for older stuff
- XP just in case I need it, but not sure why I would [probably why it just sits unused]

Back in the day I really liked 2000. And 95 before that. Find it hard going back to either now.

Always hated 3.1/3.11/etc even when they were new, I was a DOS user from 1985/6...

Had a fling with 7 and then made the mistake of upgrading to 8 [ugh], and a retro trial of Vista which was surprisingly good, but 10 covers all those bases now.

Never had ME.

It is actually almost exactly what I think.

As nice as desktop experience with Vista/Win7 is, as far as compatibility goes - Win10 still retains almost all of the SW support (some require tweaks), and adds tons of new features (Vista specifically is already breaking down on modern web/software). 7 is going to be good for a long time in this regard, but will lose security patches soon, and brings no benefits to the table over Win10 either than look&feel.

98SE covers all the DOS and early Windows stuff. 95 is only useful if your PC is weak, and WinMe brings just a tad of extra Windows compatibility at the cost of making all the DOS stuff harder - not worth it, IMO.

XP (and XP generation hardware) will cover many games in between that have compatibility issues with either earlier or later stuff. It's also much better than 2000 in supporting plug-n-play, different hardware, games and modern features.

Win3.x is just a GUI shell for running office productivity apps. It's not an environment you are supposed to 'live in' on your DOS PC.

XP was the only windows that I'll openly admit was a great OS. It was as intuitive as windows 98 and ran fast on low end hardware (until the later service packs came around) all while being very stable. I can kick around quite a few complaints about every other version. Win7 is definitely the second best, sadly being followed by Windows 8, which is easily the most non-intuitive MS operating system of all time.

Win 3.11 - 98 were really just used for IMing and browsing, and the occasional game. I never liked any for doing meaningful work. Never got into the NT branches but that doesn't mean I dislike them.

If the OP asked for my favorite MS operating system in general was, it would be MS-DOS 5 (or higher) for obvious programmer reasons, no OS playing god between me and the hardware. I enjoyed writing drivers for joysticks and ISRs to load my own keyboard and mouse drivers in those days, a much better learning experience for a hobby user, especially a young and curious one. Today we have to beg the operating system.

For actual work though, I never got into programming anything beyond DOS. I'm still a bit of a command-line warrior to this day, making Linux and even possibly Mac (Don't have one) more suitable for me.

Windows 10 makes me rage, I almost smashed my monitor the last time I tried to use the search bar but ended up with Cortana screaming through my speakers about getting to know me better. Naturally, I use it for Steam and GOG and it's good enough for that.

Yeh, XP it is.

Any reason for your preference of XP over 2K? 2KSP4 feels a lot more utilitarian and efficient while being equally stable and effective to me.

appiah4 wrote:

Any reason for your preference of XP over 2K? 2KSP4 feels a lot more utilitarian and efficient while being equally stable and effective to me.

It doesn't support nearly as much software/hardware.

For modern 64-bit hardware, Windows 7 all the way. In my book, it's far from what a truly great OS should be, but we're talking in relative terms here. After all, it's Windows. This thread is really "which version do you least hate?"

For 32-bit hardware just before the beginning of the reign of AMD64, Windows XP SP3 - I mean my "tweaked" version with everything except for essential stuff turned off in msconfig.

For mid to late 90's hardware, also early 2000's if you can find drivers (right up to the point when companies started dropping support for 98 in the latest versions of their software), Windows 98 SE.

For early 90's hardware, Windows 3.1 beats them all, even if only for the minimalistic user interface which I love. Not the most stable OS but hey, this kind of a system runs games and other potentially system-destabilizing programs on pure DOS.

Here's how I feel about Windows 95: if it can't run Windows 98, it should be a DOS/Win3x machine. Anything later than maybe DX4 or original Pentium should be dual boot Windows 98 and DOS/Win3x. And then we move into Pentium II/III territory which is solidly Windows 98 SE. This kind of leaves Win95 out in the dark.

Ultimately it depends on the hardware!

The "perfect" version of Windows would be the leanest, meanest possible OS stripped down and optimized to the maximum, but built for modern 64-bit hardware. Basically like Windows NT 4 but optimized, compiled for 64-bit, support for modern multi-core CPUs and drivers for modern hardware. I'm talking low footprint and memory usage, much code written in assembly, etc. To hell with portability, optimize for x86 and/or AMD64. But this version of Windows doesn't exist and never will. As long as the hardware continues to get bigger, the software will grow fatter and slower. The non-power user doesn't notice a difference! Gramps would be just as happy with MS-DOS on a 486 as long as he could check his email.

For me, though, one of the biggest nails in the coffin for using Windows is the required antivirus software which always has to run in the background, constantly updating out of necessity, using up memory and CPU resources when it has to, not when you want it to. Switching to Linux was great for me because I can have a lean system with no antivirus needed, and run Windows in a virtual machine, where if it gets a virus I can just re-copy the virtual disk from my backup drive and not even worry about it. Windows with no anti-virus runs pretty smoothly.

oeuvre wrote:

Anyone else fondly recall playing around with Windows Longhorn?

I remember the beta, but I remember the endless wait for the final release more!

Speaking of test releases, I have Windows 95 Preview Program on floppy somewhere, v4.90 I think. Also have Windows Whistler somewhere too.

The only beta I've ever been impressed by was Windows 7, which just seemed light years ahead of anything that Microsoft released before it.

appiah4 wrote:

Any reason for your preference of XP over 2K? 2KSP4 feels a lot more utilitarian and efficient while being equally stable and effective to me.

Honestly, solely because I used XP for nearly 10 years while I only ever just played around with 2K. My view may have easily been toward Win2K if it was my daily driver, but those were my college years (I didn't go to college for anything computer related) so my PC was just gaming and chatting with the opposite sex. I went from Win98SE to WinXP.

I've also never used vista before and only ever encountered it while fixing a girlfriends laptop about a decade ago, so naturally my comments are totally biased towards my limited observations.

I have a pentium 3 gateway solo laying around, maybe I'll put Windows 2000 on it and give it a whirl, but in 2019 I may not get the same appreciation that I would have almost 20 years ago.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

If the OP asked for my favorite MS operating system in general was, it would be MS-DOS 5 (or higher) for obvious programmer reasons, no OS playing god between me and the hardware. I enjoyed writing drivers for joysticks and ISRs to load my own keyboard and mouse drivers in those days, a much better learning experience for a hobby user, especially a young and curious one. Today we have to beg the operating system.

I look at it more like, it's no longer a total free-for-all that requires every piece of code loaded into memory to be 100% bug-free in order to remain stable. 😀

I do most of my coding on Linux, where, if you want the whole enchilada, you're welcome to it. No begging required. (You do have to have adequate permissions, but if you're a big boy and know what you should, and should not, do as root, then by all means... run your code as root. It's your box.)

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Windows 10 makes me rage, I almost smashed my monitor the last time I tried to use the search bar but ended up with Cortana screaming through my speakers about getting to know me better.

J***** F***** C*****. I would really love to see a communal approach to computing. And media, for that matter. Despite its (perhaps many) flaws, this is why I like Linux. There's no "incentive" for the developers to start mining data about me and my usage habits. I don't necessarily mind providing demographics in exchange for a subsidized product or service, but I am utterly repelled by the notion of not having any choice in the matter. It's as idealistically offensive as DRM in media and games, and how so many really cool technologies are locked behind an unfathomable paywall. (For e.g., as an individual or even a small startup, good luck developing your own products that actually use HDMI. Not "DVI on an HDMI connector", but full HDMI compliance.)

I just turned Cortana off. I've never heard from her. I don't use the search bar either, though. Removed that too.

MusicallyInspired wrote:

I just turned Cortana off. I've never heard from her. I don't use the search bar either, though. Removed that too.

I had to reformat and have disabled anything that they allow out of the box regarding cortana, unfortunately it seems you have to resort to the registry now to shut her back up?

I do use the search bar to launch local apps, but would like to disable the obnoxious online search feature built into it. I had that done via the registry previously, but I vaguely remember it also breaking local search in the process.

When I have time to play with that PC I'll look into doing it again - but MS has changed and moved or removed virtually every option regarding these things, obfuscating and hiding simple tasks from users. I've been spending most of my gaming time on Windows 7 lately, since I'm on a bit of a Borderlands 2 bender - and BL2 runs significantly better on windows 7 on my system.