Windows OS have always been blasted for their tendency to crash, to hang. They are also renowned for being extremely good at RAM-guzzling and the need for users to plug and pray…
But of all these negative comments, there must be something (relatively) good that Microsoft has produced, so -
– in your opinion, which is the best Windows OS that Microsoft has produced so far?
Some benchmarks…
Ability to perform mundane routine stuff, eg word processing
Performance eg performance per MB of RAM or something like that
Comparison to other contemporary OS’s eg XP with Mac OS X
Windows XP is not only relatively good, it’s good. Great, even. Anyone who complains about the stability of windows is either using a 4-5 year old OS, or has other, underlying hardware problems.
My experiences with XP have been my very good. I’ve had it maybe a year and I can’t think of one time it’s crashed.
I think I’ve had to reboot once or twice because an app hung up that I couldn’t kill, though. I’m of the mind that an OS should let the user the kill any app under every circumstances, but a couple times a year I can live with.
XP is very good, but I’m not sure how it is in comparision to, say, W2K Professional, because I jumped from NT to XP at work and 98SE to XP at home, with the XP machines having about 4-10 times the horsepower of their predecessors (so I can’t really judge how much of a resource hog XP is). XP is much better in both situations than NT and 98SE, in my experience.
I’ve used Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, and XP. For my uses (video encoding, games, music, etc), I prefer Windows 2000. XP doesn’t give me any compelling reason to “upgrade,” and all of my experiences with it at work and school have been unpleasant. Oh, and Activation sucks.
I’ve used Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98, XP, Mac OS 8.1, 8.6, 9, Mac OS X.
I like Win 3.x the least. Windows 95 is better than 3.1, but it’s still not very good. Windows 98…eh. Don’t like it very much, though it could be tolerable. XP is a vast improvement. VAST. Almost like a normal, reasonably functional OS.
On the Mac side, I liked OS 8.1, it’s great for older Macs. OS 8.6 and OS 9—didn’t really notice a huge difference between them; I liked them both OK. Certainly much better than Windows 95 or Windows 98. Mac OS X, though. Wow. It is really nice. Very stable. I love OS X.
My two favorite OSes are OS X and Windows XP. I prefer OS X. Windows XP is really OK, though. But it has an intrusive, “Here, let’s pop up this annoying ‘wizard’ for you” which is getting on my nerves. But it’s more stable than any other Windows OS I’ve used.
OS X is very stable, easy to use, insanely great for hardware installation (though XP is getting much better there too) and I’m crazy about it!
Except for Windows Me and NT 3.x I’ve used them all at one time or another and Windows 2000 is definitely the best so far. Windows XP is OK, but it’s more bloated and less user-friendly than 2000 and doesn’t really add any new features that are useful to me.
I am dual-booting Win98SE and XP Pro and I find that the few games I play run better on Win98. I only have 256M RAM tho, which jibes with the “bloated” arguments of XP…
And I have a SIIG ATA controller card and if I open a WinXP system folder (such as “control panel”) while transferring anything on/off one of the drives on the controller card, the entire computer hangs about 75% of the time, requiring power-off. Win98 does not have any similar problem.
So far, I have seen no evidence that WinXP does anything better than Win98. Shifty programs that hang Win98 usually hang WinXP too.
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Well… XP doesn’t crash anywhere near as often as 98 does. I had both, and I’m one of those people who tries to load 6 programs at a time. That frequently resulted in a blue screen for 98, but XP handles it (more or less). I’m glad I switched to XP, even though I can’t stand that new Start Menu thing. I switched that (and the damn Control Panel) back to the Classic View the best way I knew how. Other than that, I’m likin this XP thing.
I’ve used Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, and XP.
In my opinion XP is better because of its user friendly design.
When i used 95 and 98 i found myself installing all these small programs to make it work just the way i liked it, but when i got XP it had all of those programs and more… MY vote is for XP. :)
Hm. Every time the differences between Windows 2000 and Windows XP are discussed someone will claim that XP is “more stable” and “more compatible with games”. In practice, I’ve failed to notice any real difference between them in those areas, but those who have experienced otherwise probably did so due to driver differences.
For the NT-based Windows variants, make sure you don’t use flaky hardware or bad drivers - these are the cause for the vast majority of BSODs and freezes. This means some hardware must be avoided because only substandard drivers are provided for it, but just by avoiding buggy drivers you are pretty much guaranteed to have “decent stability”. The Windows 9X variants are inherently less stable because in addition to problems with drivers there’s insufficient isolation between user- and system-level code, meaning you have to be picky about what applications to run as well.
I’m a gamer and 98SE meets my needs quite nicely, thanks. One of my favorite games has serious problems with XP so there is no way I’m upgrading until absolutly necessary.
Win2k Pro works well for me, compared with 3.11 and 98SE. Very stable, fairly user friendly and unobtrusive. Only had one major crash, and that required a reinstall, but that was more due to some faulty hardware than anything else.
Only problem is with compatibility - a lot of old DOS programs don’t run, so if you’re into old games or something that could be a drawback.
I have fond memories of DOS games too, but you have to draw the backward compatibility line somewhere. The last version of MS-DOS was released 10 years ago or so - it’s ancient, not to mention primitive, software we’re talking about. Legacy hardware and software support is being phased out, and for very good reasons.
Emulators is the way to go for DOS support in the future, and personally I’d rather not pay for such an emulator every time I buy an operating system (or, for that matter, a computer).
I used to dual boot between 98SE and 2000 Pro. I kept 98SE solely for compatibility with some games. Now that I have newer versions of those games, I no longer need 98SE.
