| DonFerrari said: For me MS screw an operating system and make other really good (usually) The goods 3.1, 98, XP and 7 The bad 95, 2000, vista and 8 The trash ME |
About 2000 and XP it's more complicated: both were meant to send the Win9x branch into retirement, both initially were totally crappy and eventually became very good after some Service Packs, but the difference is that due to lack of HW and SW support, Windows 2000 failed at replacing Win 9x, so MS made the half-assed Win ME as a temporary solution for those that couldn't immediately switch to the NT/2000/XP/etc branch. Win ME was so crappy that probably many people (like me too) forced to stick with it blamed also 2000 for not being ready and leaving them in the shit. When I finally replaced all the incompatible HW and SW and switched to Win 2000, it had already received SP4, and it was very good, but alas its life was heading to the end, as MS had released XP as early as possible to solve the transition mess, so 2000 received the shortest possible support, when it became good XP was already out, so not only the mainstream support, but also some time of the 5 years of extended one had already run out, it was doomed to a shorter than usual life for professional versions of Windows. XP OTOH, thanks to being early and Vista being delayed (also due to Intel failing to increase performances as predicted, before it switched to Core 2 Duo), received an unexpectedly long life that allowed it to receive more care and refinements and made people love it overwhelmingly more than all its predecessors.
