Top three worse Microsoft Windows. My experience, not others.

[Win2000Fan]

This thread would be really long if I posted my opinion about all of the MS, OS's. So to spare you the pain I limited the number to three. First, I never have used Windows 95 or Vista and both of those OS's do get a lot of negative press but this is my experiences so in all fairness I have no opinion of those two operating systems. Then there is Windows ME. Like I said this is based on my experiences not others and for what ever reason Windows ME was really good to me. ME actually improved my computer experience over Windows 98 SE, which had huge problems of cold crashing my computer to a black screen and the loss of all my fresh information. One of my many guesses as to why I had such good luck with ME, is the computer I built at the time had hardware that ME liked and therefore my problems were reduced till XP came along which changed everything.

1. Windows 8. The number one worse Microsoft Operating System, hands down, in my opinion, was Windows 8. Never was there ever an operating system that made me so red hot angry and use so many curse words than Windows 8 did. When someone has to reach behind their computer and cut the power switch on their power supply to shut off their computer that is not good. Yes I figured out how to shut Win 8 off but that was after I had to get on YouTube and watch someone else. The most unintutive OS I ever experienced. This can go on and on but I will stop here.

2. Windows 98 SE. I have a love hate relationship with this OS. 98 was the first OS that introduced me to more advanced gaming outside of DOS games. It introduced Direct X and this is the OS I played my classic game favorites such as, all three early Quake games, Unreal Tournament, etc. 98 also introduced me to the internet, via a phone modem. So what is my beef you might ask? When 98 crashed it crashed hard. This was when I was writing many important college papers and all that work was now gone due to a serious 98 crash and you never knew when this crash was coming as out of nowhere it would crash.

3. Windows 1 and 2. I mentioned both because they are both so much alike. To this day I can not remember how I acquired these two GUI OS's. It was way back in my early computer experimenting days when I was experimenting with Intels, 286, 386, and 486 processors and many different kinds of software. I may have acquired these from the many different computer nerds I knew and hung with in those days. I so identified with Neo sleeping at his computer and all his gear when I saw the Matrix. Anyway when I saw Windows 1 and 2 I thought what the hell is this? Windows 1 and 2 looked more like a third party DOS shell than anything else. Better yet neither OS did anything. Really nothing.

A last word on Windows 8.1. Please do not confuse Windows 8.1 with Windows 8. Windows 8.1 is a very fun OS to use and I still use it in Oracle's VB as it is so dependable.

What are your thought's. Which Microsoft OS is your least favorite and why?

Like I said this is all my opinion only nothing more. please do not read more into this more than there is. Thanks for reading.

[_I_]

no hate for vista?

vista came out at the worst time, it was an os that needed 4g of ram just to idle at desktop
and many pcs shipped with it had 1-2g of ram

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The worst were WinME (stupid issues where you needed to install it fresh like every 6 months).... VISTA and Win8. Much of 8 was fixed with 8.1 but by that time it left such a bad taste among PC users it didn't matter. Win10 was also total junk until around 2017-2018. Now Win10 is rock solid.

Windows before 3.11 was fairly terrible but honestly everything in the 80s was terrible so that doesn't say much.

[Axe]

Windows 95, 98 and ME would've been better if Microsoft had used the NT kernel in them, it took them until XP before the mainstream customer was on NT.

[Electric Cupcake]

95 was a pretty unstable source of frustrations, though I was barely a tween at the time. I got pretty upset when Gizmos and Gadgets crashed on me. My dad did use Windows ME for a while, but my experience with it was pretty benign.

Windows 8 was a huge step back from 7 (which was the last really good Windows, IMO), but at least Microsoft backed away from the butt-ugly touchscreen-focused UI with Windows 8.1.

Windows 10 was okay, up until the first or second service pack (I refuse to call it a "feature update"). They ruined the Start Menu with those ridiculous "live" tiles, and that was the first in a long line of unwanted and outright unacceptable antifeatures the scumbags have tried to force on us. Windows 10 has been usable with OpenShell and various hacks, but as Microsoft has only doubled down with the intrusive antiuser hostility, 10 is the last Windows I will ever use.

[Win2000Fan]

Originally posted by _I_:

no hate for vista?

vista came out at the worst time, it was an os that needed 4g of ram just to idle at desktop
and many pcs shipped with it had 1-2g of ram

Yes from what I understand it was the OEM software for many computers sold at Costco and places like that, that did not have the hard wear to run it. No wonder so many people hated it.

[Win2000Fan]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

The worst were WinME (stupid issues where you needed to install it fresh like every 6 months).... VISTA and Win8. Much of 8 was fixed with 8.1 but by that time it left such a bad taste among PC users it didn't matter. Win10 was also total junk until around 2017-2018. Now Win10 is rock solid.

Windows before 3.11 was fairly terrible but honestly everything in the 80s was terrible so that doesn't say much.

Win 8 was first on my list and you can not imagine the ugly curse words I threw at it. If there was an OS that could make a good computer user feel dumb it was Win 8. From what I read, some people may have lost jobs over that OS.

[Win2000Fan]

Originally posted by Electric Cupcake:

95 was a pretty unstable source of frustrations, though I was barely a tween at the time. I got pretty upset when Gizmos and Gadgets crashed on me. My dad did use Windows ME for a while, but my experience with it was pretty benign.

Windows 8 was a huge step back from 7 (which was the last really good Windows, IMO), but at least Microsoft backed away from the butt-ugly touchscreen-focused UI with Windows 8.1.

Windows 10 was okay, up until the first or second service pack (I refuse to call it a "feature update"). They ruined the Start Menu with those ridiculous "live" tiles, and that was the first in a long line of unwanted and outright unacceptable antifeatures the scumbags have tried to force on us. Windows 10 has been usable with OpenShell and various hacks, but as Microsoft has only doubled down with the intrusive antiuser hostility, 10 is the last Windows I will ever use.

Windows 8.1 is a good OS and I still use it in my VB.

[Win2000Fan]

Originally posted by Vanguard:

Windows 95, 98 and ME would've been better if Microsoft had used the NT kernel in them, it took them until XP before the mainstream customer was on NT.

In those days Microsoft was just starting to brake away from DOS. All three of those OS’s sit on top of DOS. You could even command 95 and 98 to close out into DOS. They tried to brake away from the DOS look with ME but it was still DOS. ME was supposed to be the brake out OS using the NT kernel. But they were not ready yet as it was to soon. Windows 2000 was the answer which is a great OS but its problem was 2000 was not ready to play all mainstream games. It could play some but not as many as Microsoft had wanted and that’s where XP comes in as that OS, as all us gamers know, was very friendly to playing most all games.

[Illusion of Progress]

My answer will be different depending on whether you ask me what I think they were in their own time, versus what I think they inherently were. I feel like some of them weren't inherently bad but were products of unfortunate circumstance (bad timing, hardware market was unwilling to tolerate their demands, bad driver support, etc.) and thus were left with a bad legacy.

I feel like this describes Windows Vista specifically, and that it therefore gets more hate than it warrants. The so called "Mojave Experiment" and the follow up love for Windows 7 speaks volumes to me. Contrast that to Windows 8, which was just bad for design changes, or Windows 9x, which had some serious stability issues, and I'd say those have claims to being more inherently bad.

My least liked is Windows 8, easily, as I feel it set the stage for what Windows has become up until now. I'd often tease that Windows 10 was Windows 8.2 and Windows 11 is Windows 8.3. Yes, Windows 8.1 was definitely better but I still felt like it was a step worse than Windows 7, although a step better than Windows 10.

So I'd probably put Windows 10 and 11 after it in that order? Not sure. Windows 10 is the inverse of Windows Vista for me; it's the one I don't understand the modern narrative of love for when everyone seemingly hated it upon release. It's tolerable at best... but never was good. There's too many "inherent" flaws with it. A lot of the complaining of Windows 11 sounds a lot to me like what we were complaining about with Windows 10. Did people forget already? This modern stage of loss of control, loss of privacy, ads, and all that; it all started with Windows 10. Where did the Microsoft Store start, 8 or 10? Either way, add that to the pile.

As for the other "big" disliked one, Windows ME, I can't comment as I never had it. But a friend had it with her first PC. I recall that many years later (like very late 2000s), she was over my house using my PC and playing some games/emulators (the latter concept amazed her, haha), and my PC had a BSOD while she was playing something because I was still testing between two CPU overclock configurations and was still on the slightly unstable one. But her reaction surprised me; she had apparently never seen her PC do that!? And she had Windows ME for years at least.

Windows XP and Windows 7 (hard to say which) were my two favorites. I'd be surprised if we ever see a "good" Windows for consumers any time soon. I think you have to go to Linux to get a "good" OS now. Windows' sole redeeming feature, and the reason I stick with it, is the software ecosystem. There's too many things I need it for, but I'm getting closer and closer to dual booting as the years go by and trying to shift as much to Linux as I can. I tried Ubuntu way back in 2008 and mostly liked what I saw then, and with stuff like Proton it's probably only better these days.

[Win2000Fan]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

My answer will be different depending on whether you ask me what I think they were in their own time, versus what I think they inherently were. I feel like some of them weren't inherently bad but were products of unfortunate circumstance (bad timing, hardware market was unwilling to tolerate their demands, bad driver support, etc.) and thus were left with a bad legacy.

I feel like this describes Windows Vista specifically, and that it therefore gets more hate than it warrants. The so called "Mojave Experiment" and the follow up love for Windows 7 speaks volumes to me. Contrast that to Windows 8, which was just bad for design changes, or Windows 9x, which had some serious stability issues, and I'd say those have claims to being more inherently bad.

My least liked is Windows 8, easily, as I feel it set the stage for what Windows has become up until now. I'd often tease that Windows 10 was Windows 8.2 and Windows 11 is Windows 8.3. Yes, Windows 8.1 was definitely better but I still felt like it was a step worse than Windows 7, although a step better than Windows 10.

So I'd probably put Windows 10 and 11 after it in that order? Not sure. Windows 10 is the inverse of Windows Vista for me; it's the one I don't understand the modern narrative of love for when everyone seemingly hated it upon release. It's tolerable at best... but never was good. There's too many "inherent" flaws with it. A lot of the complaining of Windows 11 sounds a lot to me like what we were complaining about with Windows 10. Did people forget already? This modern stage of loss of control, loss of privacy, ads, and all that; it all started with Windows 10. Where did the Microsoft Store start, 8 or 10? Either way, add that to the pile.

As for the other "big" disliked one, Windows ME, I can't comment as I never had it. But a friend had it with her first PC. I recall that many years later (like very late 2000s), she was over my house using my PC and playing some games/emulators (the latter concept amazed her, haha), and my PC had a BSOD while she was playing something because I was still testing between two CPU overclock configurations and was still on the slightly unstable one. But her reaction surprised me; she had apparently never seen her PC do that!? And she had Windows ME for years at least.

Windows XP and Windows 7 (hard to say which) were my two favorites. I'd be surprised if we ever see a "good" Windows for consumers any time soon. I think you have to go to Linux to get a "good" OS now. Windows' sole redeeming feature, and the reason I stick with it, is the software ecosystem. There's too many things I need it for, but I'm getting closer and closer to dual booting as the years go by and trying to shift as much to Linux as I can. I tried Ubuntu way back in 2008 and mostly liked what I saw then, and with stuff like Proton it's probably only better these days.

I am kind of strange as I think my favorite is Win 8.1. Yes I despised 8 but it’s not 8.1. I still use Win 8.1 in my Virtual Box because I can depend on it. And I totally agree with you that we will never see another good GUI OS from Microsoft again as they have sold out to ads and all that silly news they keep throwing at us. Oh yes I do dual boot between Win 11 and Linux Mint.

[Dutchgamer1982]

win 95 was good.. it was for many the first OS after DOS, as win 3.1 was hardly ever used by anyopne....

win 98 was good.. it was an decent upgrade from 95.. and most did it
win 2000 was acceptable.. but never very populair outside office use...

win xp was good.. basicly it replaced both 98 at home and 2000 at the office.. and was rightfully populair but to be a miser.. it was the first OS that lacked support for some of the older hardware.. like my deskjet 520.. that I had since it was hooked to an old ibm 8086 under dos.. suddenly could not be made to run on xp...

win 7 was a mixed bag.. generally good.. but again some hardware and software does not work as well on it.. still for the most part it does. but old features like pinnball are missed.

after this there are no good OS made

windows 10 : I hate it most hate it.. it sucks.. but it has been pressed hard.. and it has become the standard OS for most. it rules more cause of windows 7 no longer supported and forced upgrades that causuals are to lazy to fight back against..
-so while widely used.. it is NOT widely loved... it only excists cause better older os are no longer supported.
the killing of legacy support.. the privacy invading features.. the lack of backward compability.. it is bad.

the bad :

win 3.1 : it was simply used by nobody, people kept using dos until win95 came out which was the first widely embraced windows.

win ME (meer ellende, or more misery) as we called it.. nobody used it.. if you bought a pc that had it preinstalled you would not know how fast to get rid of it and put win 98 on it instead.

win vista also very much hated... it used insane amounts of system resources it was basicly win 7 in a time that computers were not strong enough

windows 8 : hated from day 1 nobody wanted it.. the terrible tile menu.. it clearly being made to look like a cellphone the idiotic windows phones.. and it essentially killed any legacy games you still had.. NOBODY I know ever used 8..
8.1 was essentially a fix to make the menu's back to something more normal.. but it fixed not the bigger issues.. simply put.. any system than could run 8 could run 7 so you never needed anything else.

windows 11.. nobody I know uses it.. everybody hates it.. it has dialed all the pricacy intrusion to 11.. but why it is hated most is the insane hardware demands.. meaning that unlike 10.. hardly anybody is able to upgrade to it...
it is the first windows ever to have such insane demands... in the past windows versions would require a certain processing power... (amount of flops) and a certain amount of harddrive space to instal.. and an certain amount of ram.. but that was it..
never would those with very potent pc's high end and more potetent than 99% of modern sales.. locked out of installing a windows version.

[Dutchgamer1982]

if I pick my favorite windows of all times it is XP
followed by win 98SE
followed by 95
and finally win 7

after than... I start grinding my teeth and rather go dos or linux..

[Ranzera]

I owe Win 98SE for being the reason why I got to be so good with computers. That OS sure loved to self destruct. That said, I hated VIsta so much more.

Windows XP was the sweet spot of Microsoft OSes. They haven't been as good before or since, though 2000 was pretty good too. Win 7 was tolerable and everything after that was a crime against customers.

[r.linder]

From worst to best:
1. ME
2. Vista
3. 8

[Syzygy]

Windows 11 is cancer. Also 8, and Vista. That's the three.