The Glory Days of Windows XP

[vercetti2021]

How crazy is it that I'm just now hearing this theme for the first time? It's so kick ass! XP...truly a system of better days. Before the dark times of the internet.

Let's all take a moment from the crazy world and listen to this gem I discovered for myself, and just...relax.

[Oneironaut]

1. Windows XP was the best, imo, followed by Windows 7.

The new Windows versions are just another spy machine, giving your every movement to advertisers and governments. I remember when Windows was just Windows. No wonder Microsoft is cratering.

[brooklynite]

2. Walk towards the light and buy a Macintosh...

[crazycatlady]

3. I had one of those for about 6 months (borrowed it from my mom)

ANd just didn't like it. I just couldn't get used to it.

Was very happy to give it back to her, buy a PC, and never looked back.

[llmart]

4. Windows 10 is awful!

It's like they tried to add so much junk and apps and all sorts of other crap that I'll never use and don't get me started on finding something in their "menu".

[Ron Obvious]

6. There are ways to make windows 8 & 10 look just like windows 7

SmartIsBack is one way which I've been using for a couple of years. Gadgets are available for download too.

I agree, though: All those "look at me!" craplets make the system visually noisy and unpleasant to use. No idea what Microsoft were thinking...

[hunter]

5. I could peel all the crap out of Windows XP and build some fairly decent machines.

I could fit a very rich XP installation on a single DVD-R.

Windows 10 doesn't let you do that. It's gigabyte after gigabyte of interdependent chunks of steaming cruft. Updates on limited internet connections are a nightmare.

Windows 10 makes me glad I'm a Linux guy.

[Ron Obvious]

7. In recent years, Windows is trying to do too many things automatically

I call this "Mac disease": assume infinite ignorance on the part of the user, make decisions for them, and shield them from implementation details including the file system. Very annoying to those of us who know what we're doing. It's like HAL from 2001: "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you do that".

I've got my system set to NOT automatically download and install updates, but for the past couple of weeks it kept trying to cram the Fall Creator's Update down my throat anyway. It would start downloading on its own every day with no way to stop it and then go through a number of reboot cycles, fail, and then attempt to recover the previous installation. Day after day without any kind of error message or clue why it failed. Finally, it damaged the bootloader so that it could only boot from an installation disk.

Sorry for the rant. It just took me nearly a full day to recover the bootloader and to get rid of the automatic updates. Grrr....

[benld74]

8. Anyone remember Windows 3.1. ???

[area51]

9. How about Windows 1.0?

[blogslut]

10. I still miss Windows 2000

It was tight.