What was the worst version of Windows?
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Windows 2000 and 7 were the biggest improvements (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows 2000 especially was probably the single biggest jump in terms of stability, performance and features over everything that came before by combining the robust NT codebase with the UI of Windows 98.
Windows 7 comes in at second due to the vast improvement in stability, 64-bit computing, UI improvements and clean nature.
Windows ME was just the worst. It was somehow flakier than Windows 98 SE and had a worse UI.
Windows 8 was an interesting bold failure, but it wasn't bad. It just wasn't what we wanted.
Vista was a bloated nightmare, but it wasn't as bad as we thought.
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At release time, Vista was bad. Over time (and rather quickly) it became more usable.
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If you had a high end gaming PC when Vista came out (I was a beta tester) it was nice, had really cool features... But for people with midrange or god forbid a low end machine... Well it was probably pretty horrid. I think a lot of the improvement people experienced with Vista was that they ended up getting better PC's over time and well it worked better.
Kind of miss being able to have a whole movie as a background lol
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Even if you had a high-end CPU, it had some annoyances like giving more security alerts than were really necessary.
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You must be on the opposite side of some mandela effect rift because I tried vista on my top-grade gaming PC built in 2005 and it was barely usable and far behind XP performance. They might have got away with the large regression if they didn't certify p4, incompatible integrated graphics, 512MB RAM ewaste as "vista-ready" however.
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Vista launched in 2007 so your top end 2005 machine was literally already ancient at the time, back then if your machine was 6 months old the latest stuff was making huge jumps in performance.
Plus Vista liked some hardware, depending on the drivers, so my top end machine might have been a bit more compatible (I was working for Dell at the time.)
Re: Windows 2000 and 7 were the biggest improvemen (Score:2)
I politely disagree: windows XP was the first version which was stable and could run on modest hardware. I therefore think XP deserves more credit than 2000
Re: Windows 2000 and 7 were the biggest improvemen (Score:2)
It's true that vista was released on machines that couldn't run it well. But it was also, genuinely, a memory hog. It loaded lots of services on startup, for features that weren't in constant use. And its window compositor held every pixel of every open window in system memory. Windows 7 fixed both those problems (and also machines were bigger by the time it came out).
Vista 8 (Score:3)
8 had those annoying gesture craps. 8 would had been better than Vista IF it didn't have those.
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Those gestures worked great on tablets. It's a shame they mostly were killed off. The start button right under your thumb while holding a tablet was awesome.
What was spectacularly stupid and horrifically dumb was to not offer as much of the Win32 namespace in C# apps at launch as was humanely possible.
Need a basic web server or advanced HTTP parsing in your app? Sorry gotta write it from scratch. Etc, etc...
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Yeah, that's fine for touchscreens but I don't like touchscreens since I am an old fart with keyboards and mouses with computers.
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8.1 Update 1 was actually super good and usable.
I didn't use 8 until 8.1 Update 1 and didn't understand what the fuss was about. Then I put 8 on an old machine without any updates (short-term) and it all made sense.
Re: Windows 2000 and 7 were the biggest improvemen (Score:2)
I really enjoyed upgrading to windows 2000 in college. It was nice and rock solid. For context, I grew up using classic MacOS, then when I went to college in 1999, I had a PC running windows 98. 2000 was just rock solid. I obviously upgraded to XP in 2001, and used that until I switched to Mac OS X (now macOS) in 2006.
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I certainly agree with Windows 2000. Back then it seemed as if Microsoft finally caught up with the rest of the world by having a real multi-user operation system. You could easily have a Windows 2000 machine serving a full classroom of users via RDP clients.
So I guess Windows 2000 with no added functionality, but just the bugs removed, would be a very decent version of Windows.
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Vista was the biggest jump in terms of stability and arguably features.
Vista got a lot of hate because it didn't perform well, but under the hood it introduced a lot of critical improvements that lead to 7 being as good as it was.
Prior to Vista apps were largely uncontrolled. They dumped stuff all over the filesystem, hooked into everything they could, and generally behaved badly. Vista introduced User Account Control, which punished bad behaviour by forcing the annoying prompt to be shown. That alone make
Re: Windows 2000 and 7 were the biggest improvemen (Score:2)
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Windows 3.0 was the biggest improvement and is what brought Windows into the mainstream. Windows 2.11 was its predecessor and it sucked harder than anything listed here.
After that I'd say Windows NT 3.51 (Note the NT) was a big improvement over Windows NT 3.1. At the time this was the best operating system I'd used (had been on OS/2, and Solaris). Then things started going downhill with NT 4.0.
Why 7 and 8 together? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Vista is still better than ME. ME did combine the bad sides of Win2K and Win 98 without the advantages that either Win2K or 98 had.
But the worst Windows ever was 1.03.
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You are totally correct, I didn't even bother voting.
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Good question, re why are Windows 7 & 8 bundled together. I personally found Windows 8 faster on the same hardware then Windows 7 and a decent performance improvement. And I found Windows 8 with Classic Shell to be just fine, fixing the hideous Microsoft start menu redesign.
Windows 7/8 are not comparable? (Score:3)
Windows 7 worked. Windows Vista was crap.
Weird groupings (Score:4, Insightful)
The best:
Windows 98SE
Windows 2000
Windows XP but not until SP3
Windows 7
The Worst:
Windows 95
Windows ME
Windows Vista
Windows 8
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You missed Windows 1.03. The most useless Windows ever.
Re: Weird groupings (Score:2)
The best part about Windows 1.03 is you can still exit to DOS trivially. That's not the case with Win ME.
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Windows 2 and Windows 10 are about equal in my book, even though Win 10 has more features the graphic design on both are bad.
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Windows 95 OSR2 was pretty good.
Vista was passable after a couple service packs and NVIDIA finally fixed their drivers.
Windows ME and 8 are inexcusable though.
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Re: Weird groupings (Score:2)
Windows 95 had a vulnerability that let anyone bluescreen your computer by connecting to your port 139. There was an app for this, widely disttrbuted, able to be used by non-technical people, and we didn't have automatic updates rapidly deploying critical security patches.
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95 (Score:2)
Lots of technical innovation built on duck tape and bailing wire. VxD was a mess. WDM 1.0 on Win98 was lightyears better than VxD 2.0 on Windows 95. If you never added or changed hardware on a 95 machine, I would grant you it would be somewhat stable. But, this was about the time everyone was trying to buy cheapo fast Winmodems that were an absolute disaster on 95. As in, you could have sound or a modem but not both at the same time. Windows 98, same hardware, better drivers, no problem.
Re: Windows 7/8 are not comparable? (Score:2)
I bet if you put on Windows Vista on your first Win7 PC and put 7 on your Vista box your opinions would be reversed?
XP very long length meant out of date old crap with 256 megs to 512egs of ram and 1 ghz single core goodness with spinning rust 5400 rpm hard drives. 4 gigs got shocks from furious slashdotters back then but like XP it forced folks to get with the times.
Vista was a little sluggish indexing at first round but ok on 2 gigs of ram on 2.4 ghz dual core2duos.
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Windows 7 worked. Windows Vista was crap.
Windows Vista worked after the initial bugs were ironed out. 7 was basically a Vista service pack and had better marketing from Microsoft.
Windows 10/11 (Score:2)
An OS that contains spyware, is bad enough. Being practically designed as such, is worse.
Of course, home users can do what they want. But for business users, I can't fathom why this would be acceptable. A 3rd party (beside business & their clients) having the ability to dig into user's files at all times, without notification, warning, or 'need', means that data meant to be confidential (as I assume most business data would be), can't be trusted to remain so. Such data should at least take a consciou
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Good luck finding a usable smartphone that doesn't spy on you.
The whole purpose of smartphones is to make you an appendix to the Alphabet/(What's the other one again) overlords.
Re: Windows 10/11 (Score:3)
Re:Windows 10/11 (Score:4, Insightful)
An OS that contains spyware, is bad enough. Being practically designed as such, is worse.
What amazes me, having worked with W10 for years now, is how slow and unresponsive it is. For example, I got a laptop returned to me and went to put it on the network as a matter of course to get any missed updates. The user was still logged into the machine. They couldn't be bothered to turn it off when it was returned. I did Restart and waited. And waited. And waited. The system sat at Restarting until I finally killed the power. I've had other systems which sat at Restarting for so long I had to rip the battery out to break it out of its hung state.
And this is routine for W10. It's always stuck at "Preparing" to do something, at "Updating", at doing who the hell knows what. It never does anything until you put a gun to its head. Even logging into a machine for the first time is tediously long.
I know for an absolute fact earlier versions were more responsive with less ram than W10 is now. Not to mention easier to use. Such as the Start menu where now having to scroll down the list takes so long because you can't find the scroll bar to grab onto. Or any scroll bar anywhere. Scroll bars should always be visible and large. This pop out, pop in has to stop.
The of course there is determined effort to make things as difficult to find as possible. Remember when everything you needed was in Control Panel? Not any longer. Now things (some, but not all) are in something called Settings whose layout was clearly done by a programmer because there is no logic, rhyme or reason to where things are located or how they're arranged, not to mention burying what you need in extra menus.
Having moved to Mint, it's amazing how much more streamlined and easier to use it is than a bloated piece of spyware. I'll be glad when I can retire in a few years and with luck avoid the even bigger pile of yak manure called Windows 11.
Weird poll (Score:5, Insightful)
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Vista was the reincarnation of ME for the NT kernel.
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There are 8 options on this poll and I think that is the limit for /. polls.
- If they are going to do a poll with more than 8 "sensible" options, how difficult can it be to modify the old code?
- Who the hell thought making Windows 7 and 8 one option was a good idea?
Having said that, Windows 8 was not that bad from a technical standpoint. The problem with Windows 8 was that Microsoft wanted to unify the look-and-feel across all devices - smartphones, tablets and PCs. Unfortunately for them, nobody with eno
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To be honest, the real worst windows ever was Windows CE. Remember, that's what used to run the "smartphones" before the iPhone (Yes, it was the leading OS on smartphones).
You needed to run the task manager often to kill apps that were clogging the memory. You needed to reboot the device on a daily basis to keep it operational. Sometimes you would get a BSOD when receiving a call of an SMS. There was a start menu, on which the calculator was very last. Accessing the calculator was ~10 taps on the 4 way butt
Re: Weird poll (Score:2)
You are being too kind to WinCE. It was the worst product Iâ(TM)ve ever seen of any OS, from any manufacturer, ever.
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This poll is really weird. There is no entry for Vista, which was one of the most hated Windows versions. And Windows 7 & 8 were nothing alike. One was one of the most appreciated releases of the past 18 years while the other was one of the least used. If there is a limit on the number of polls it would make more sense to group NT/2000 and put a slot in for Vista.
EXACTLY. Vista was a complete no-win for customers.
I'm an idiot... (Score:3)
I didn't cash in the voucher, it eventually expired, and was lost. About four years later I finally purchased a copy of XP and installed it on that same machine. WOW! Why didn't I do that years ago. Windows XP was a huge leap from ME.
Yes (Score:2)
Yes it is.
Worst flavor (Score:2)
of shit?
What? (Score:2)
Seriously they left off Vista which was one of the worst and then Windows 8.0 with it's Metro interface was right up there with ME. Who made this poll?
Man oh man (Score:2)
If ever a quiz had multiple correct answers - this one would certainly be it.
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"All of the above"?
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Would still be wrong, as the list failed to include Vista for some reason :D
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Well, given we're talking about Windows... the quiz itself being wrong would somehow fit. :-P
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Tomorrow's news (Score:2)
Windows 7 - which was previously widely believed to be dead - today filed suit in a Seattle US district court against Slashdot Media, LLC for defamation of character.
"Up until now I've been enjoying what I thought was a well-deserved retirement," said Windows 7. "But then, today, someone points out this new Slashdot poll. WTF, Slashdot? What did I ever do to you? Why are you linking me to that piece of garbage, Windows 8? This will not stand!"
Afterwards Windows 7 was last seen shambling off, muttering profa
Windows ME was the easiest to brick or be bricked (Score:2)
I remember out of all the versions this was probably the easiest version to brick and the hardest version to recover from bricking. On many of the other versions of windows at least you could use the tools and safe mode to work your way out of an issue with the OS. But ME had to load for you to use tools, and if it couldn't load, you were out of luck.
This is back in the day when it was slow to do reinstalls, another thing is for many customers that I had to fix OS's for, reinstalling wasn't an option becaus
Windows 3.0 (Score:2)
Windows 3.0 was S - L - O - W and very clunky. It was hard to get around the UI. And it allowed only 8-letter file names.
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It's true that computers weren't fast back then. But Windows 3.1 was a huge speed improvement, eve on the same hardware.
Get your comments in now (Score:2)
...before they archive this poll and disable comments altogether.
What? (Score:2)
Windows 7 and 8 mixed together? Someone seemingly crazy has mixed the best and worst Windows releases over the past almost two decades.
Let's say I wasn't a fan of Windows 95/95 OSR2/98/98SE and ME. All five were buggy as hell, crashed too often, but at least offered some nice new features (audio playback and recording, MIDI, DirectX and OpenGL, high display resolution, 24 bit colors, LAN, Windows File Sharing and the Internet) over MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 before it.
3.x is the worst (Score:2)
XP Broke my will to live and drove me to Debian. (Score:3)
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"I've been Windows free since. My newish laptop is dual booted Win 10 (work needs) and Ubuntu"
So you're Windows free, except for your new laptop that has Windows?
You can't lump 7 and 8 together!!! (Score:3)
Stupidest poll ever! (Score:2)
10/11 (Score:3)
Can't group 7/8 together, and where is Vista ? (Score:2)
Windows 1.0 (Score:2)
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Where's Vista? (Score:2)
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Even seasoned Windows users like me were initially confused by this new "premium" deal I was like: "Is it some kind of actual certification, or a rename of the recommended specs, where you take the amount of
Vista was so bad... (Score:2)
Creator of poll has never used Windows? (Score:2)
7 and 8 were as different as 8 and 10 (Score:2)
8 would have been my choice if it was an option by itself.
Windows 7 was solid. I always say Windows 7 was released to the public whereas Windows 8 was inflicted on the public.
Windows 3.1 (Score:2)
Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself (Score:2)
I have W10 running on some hardware, but only due to inertia: that was what came installed. The MS systems I use most are all W7 and I have no reason to change that. I know that they are now unsupported - which is actually an advantage as there are no annoying nags to perform upgrades. They are therefore stable.
As for security: that is simply not a concern. I am not running NORAD nor do those instances contain any va
WindowsME worst OF THOSE LISTED (Score:2)
And even the relatively stable 3.1/3.11 releases should have been made TCP/IP friendly far earlier in their life cycle.
Also, grouping Windows 10 and 11 together is not a good idea for this poll. Having used it for a few weeks now, I'd say Windows 11 is a bigger departure from Windows 10 than Windows 10 was from 7.
Windows Vista (Score:2)
I'm surprised Windows Vista is not in the list, but to be fair Vista was almost as good as Windows 7 by Vista SP2.
The biggest problem was that most graphics cards didn't support WDDM at the time of release and that caused all sorts of performance and stability issues.
The kernel hardly changed from Vista SP2 to Windows 7 (at least as far as it's publicly known).
My vote goes for Windows ME.
Scrap this poll (Score:2)
This poll as written makes no sense. Delete the poll and re-do it with Vista on the list, and 7 separated from 8.
In many ways, Vista was worse than ME, due to it being pre-installed on PCs that didn't remotely reach the minimum system requirements, and having serious performance and scheduling issues (remember file copies and network transfers slowed to a crawl if you were playing audio or video?) until several patches had been issued.
Consider the kernel. (Score:2)
Time has well and truly been called on the old Real-mode kernel. The Winner there was OS/2 for Windows. If Windows crashed, just relaunch it. Shell was acceptable. OS/2 was great, if unloved by application developers, but perhaps not visually the best (not the worst either). Worst was, to no one's surprise, ME. I only knew one person with Windows ME and their PC was
Vista underrated - it was fine. (Score:2)
Vista ain't there, but it wasn't bad, just the brand got a bad reputation.
I liked ME it looked modern.
Windows XP was really two versions - XP service pack 2 was a very significant update to XP, the first time security was a driver in Windows OS. XP SP2 was probably the best - or maybe 7.
8 was probably the low point.
From Worst to First (Score:2)
From Worst to First:
Windows ME
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows NT
Windows Vista
Windows 8
Windows 2000
Windows 11
Windows XP
Windows 10
Windows 7
I could go into further detail, but rankings are decided in order of importance: Stability, Feature Set, Hardware Comparability, UI
The Microsoft Windows Store is probably the single reason why Windows 10/11 aren't the best ranked.
Windows 9 was the worst. (Score:2)
Ok new poll... (Score:2)
What is the worst version of Windows:
[ ] Windows NT/10
[ ] Windows 3.1/XP
[ ] Windows Me/7
[ ] Windows 2000
[ ] Windows Vista/3.0
[ ] Windows 8/11
[ ] Windows 95 SP3
[ ] Windows 10 Mobile
You can't lump 7 in with 8 (Score:2)
8.0 was the worst Windows OS, hands down. Totally confusing gesture based controls when most people were using a mouse. Simply closing a modern app was a complete clusterf__k (you had to grab it from the top and pull down to close an app).
I remember trying to give tech support and asking people to "open the charms bar." Then they had no idea what that was or how to make it happen. WTF?
7, otoh, was pretty brilliant, and 8 was mostly fixed, in short order, by 8.1.
Whoever wrote this poll has not had to support
Windows ME Won By Screwing Up CD-ROM Drivers (Score:2)
It somehow managed to "upgrade" the CD-ROM drivers so that CD-ROM drives were often unusable. In the pre SATA era, with ATA connections, with limited Internet connectivity to replace said drivers (using a floppy?) this was a monumental feat of facepalming. Nothing else comes close (WinXP pre SP1 pooching the WIFI drivers is a close second).
Vista (Score:2)
Left off intentionally to make it a race?
Stand by (Score:2)
They' re still working on it.
Windows 3.1 to3.5 were okay (Score:2)
that is, the desktop user interface was ok - that was back when windows actually had windows. Way before that pesky "Start" button. The desktop was similar to most smartphone desktops with lots of icons - only they were grouped in nice userfirendly panels that could be opened and closed (those were the "windows". Mac had something like it at the time, only mac had the annoying feature that its windows always opened new windows so after a short while of work you had so many windows open that even closing the
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oh, but just try getting any of them on the www. The horror! I think perhaps that 3.5 was the first with some kind of built-in modem access, those before depended on unauthorized hacks and third party software to even connect to the modem, and mostly one ended up spending hours, days, or weeks in a frustrating search for a solution, and if you didn't have the right pieces of hardware you just had to give up
Vista! (Score:2)
Shame on the poll maker for protecting Vista by not making it a selection.
All of them? (Score:2)
All of them? Windows is like a Ford Pinto, eventually it is going to blow up spectacularly with you inside of it. No version of Windows is POSIX compliant.
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It's a meme by diginatives voting things they know nothing about. ME was just an improved version of 95/98/98SE and definitely not worse in any regard than in predecessors. However, it's often compared to Windows 2000, which was the first NT that had plug & play and XP, which was the first consumer NT.
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It was much better than DOS 4, a real turd.