That’s the thing, though. The metro interface IS the start button, only big. It has almost all the same exact things in it the start button had! I just seriously don’t understand how people don’t get that. Once I realized that I saw Win8 for what it really was: an improved Win7 except with a very large start button and an actual use for the windows key. The only thing really new is the charms bar. I would understand if people were yelling the loudest about how it’s not intuitive that the charms bar “settings” button is for what you have open specifically, or that that’s where the power settings are hidden. But what people yell about first is the start button and I’m just like dude…press the windows key, and there is your start menu. Instead of being tiny, it is now big icons. That isn’t the hard part. I will say that 8.1 made managing the start menu/metro interface easier though.
3.1 was very nice for its time. There’s a special place in hell for those who diss it
I have XP, Vista, and 7 and like them all.
XP is like an 1980s Nissan Sentra; it’ll go on forever.
I love Vista because I’ve configured it in the way I want and searching is much easier.
My kids use the 7 one (and some have it at worlk)and I like it less than Vista, especially the toolbar. It’s like Vista 2.0 for me.
There is a small place in my heart for DOS 5.0 (and MS Word 5.5).
You’re not kidding - XP still has an install base of just under 1/3rd of all PCs worldwide. That’s an awful lot for an operating system that will be officially unsupported by Microsoft in just three months. (April 8 is the official cutoff date.) There will be no more patches, and no more updates for the XP version of Microsoft Security Essentials. (Some third-party security products may continue support.)
I think hardware will be the limiting factor in the life of XP. Eventually all those 500 million XP systems will start to have their harddrives die, or face some other hardware failure. At that point, the user will have no choice but to use a different operating system.
I’ve often wondered if MS is crazy like a fox with this.
Yes, Windows 8 is half baked. Yes, the first party apps were pretty weak. The charms bar and control panel make finding setting a pain. Forcing users into the jarring new metro interface was heavy-handed and alienated people. BUT…taking these hits and getting it out there means there are a lot more apps in the app store today than there would be if Win 8.1 was the first release of this new paradigm.
OK, maybe I’m missing something. How does Metro do the following:
[ul]
[li]List of most frequently used applications, sorted by frequency of use with the ability to pin the most-used at the top[/li][li]User-customized, alphabetically sorted, nested folders of apps/links/documents[/li][li]Access to frequently used folders and functions[/li][li]Access to recently used files[/li][li]Access to Devices/Printers, Control Panels, Run, Search and Help from the same place you access everything else described above[/li][/ul]
I voted for ME, but the real answer for me would be NT. What an unforgiving mess that was.
I understand the dislike for 8, but I can live it it.
XP was the worst I’ve ever used. I used 95 until Vista came out, but the few times I tried XP I thought it was horrible.
Let me have a crack at this.
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The start screen allows you to pin apps and group them into columns. This is no different than pinning applications to the start menu. If you choose to view the full app list you can sort them alphabetically, by most used, recently installed etc. Installed apps are automatically pinned to the start screen and highlighted as new in the app menu. You lose the auto-sorting of most used apps on the main screen but the live tiles are the trade-off.
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Folders are replaced by the start screen, resizable movable tiles and groups. The nested folder structure is lost, but I never found that very user friendly navigate with a trackpad.
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See #1. You can pin any frequently used folders or admin tools to the start screen.
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Recent files is gone, but in most apps you have a list of recent files in the home area.
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Settings, devices and control panel can be pinned to start screen just as they were in the start menu.
What are the complaints about XP? My issues with ME was its stability. Damn thing kept crashing all the time, it seemed. XP was rock solid and, IMHO, a very pretty and user friendly GUI. I’m just curious what it is that people didn’t like about XP, especially from Service Pack 2 onward.
XP seemed really buggy the first few times I tried it. Maybe it was my hardware, I don’t remember. It did get a bit better with SP 2, but my older machine with 95 ran just as well for my day to day needs. I also really hated the ugly UI.
Or right-click in the bottom left corner for the power menu - which, even in windows 8 (before 8.1) offered broader, more direct access to this stuff than did the Start menu in any previous version of windows.
XP didn’t support some legacy software that people had been using since the age of dinosaurs - that caused an initial blip of concern and panic.
I actually voted for ME once I looked at some screenshots of both ME and W2k, so the sole W2k vote isn’t me.
In case anybody cares.
Different strokes, I guess. For me, it’s the prettiest and most intuitive of the Windows UIs (and there’s certain things about it I still prefer to OS X), although I never did much work on 7 or 8. (And, of course, Windows 2000 was rock solid with the more old-school looking interface. 95 was buggy for me, but I did like 98SE.) Plus you can also skin XP so it looked like the old one. I know some people complained about the “Fischer-Price” look of the interface, but I never did get that complaint.
But on the other hand Windows NT/2000 wasn’t aimed at the consumer market, but written for enterprises. As you probably know Windows 9* and Windows NT/2000 are two different OS’s (which where sort of merged in Windows XP, with the kernel from NT and features from 98).
I can’t answer for the other guys, but I clicked the wrong button myself. 
I used XP for ten years straight without any problem I can remember. Now I’m on 7, and it works very well too.
My vote must go to Vista, which was a mess (IME) before the service packs, at least in my enterprise.
I can assume that anyone who did not vote for ME never used it.
Any system that does not crash daily ( and sometimes hourly) is a big improvement over ME.
It’s important to note what Windows Me actually was.
Windows NT workstation was replaced by Windows 2000 for business use - and there was a perceived need to release a consumer OS in step with this - which turned out to be ME.
ME was Windows 98 with a bunch new features which were in fact the embryonic versions of the things that made XP really great - System Restore and Windows File Protection, for example.
Unfortunately, these were all either a bit too much for the the Win9x architecture to handle, or were too early releases to be considered completely stable - and the result was a sluggish, buggy, crashy OS. Nearly everything that ME tried to do, XP succeeded at (partly because it was based on NT architecture, partly because the features were mature and stable, and partly because hardware specs had moved upward)
I voted for Vista because I never used ME that much but now that I think about it, I wish I would have voted 8 because it’s the first operating system that made me feel stupid. Usually I can pick up and learn pretty quick, but you could cut thick rope with the learning curve for Windows 8.
I may have to play around with that then. If folders can be pinned and I can see lists and not just tiles, I could probably force Metro to work the way I want it to. Of course, my current computer is quite happy running 7, but I do have two Windows laptops in the office running 8.