Best Windows ever?

ciaranr

Have a little on going debate with Windows using friends about which Windows release is the best to be using today. Say from 98 to XP Pro. I'd go for 2000 Pro any time but I'm just curious what others think? Assuming all our hardware supports all flavours and gaming isn't a huge consideration.Will Longhorn beat all?

Agent Smith

i like xp pro......



gotta love that real plug and play

greglo23

2000 pro runs xp a close second but the lack of compatible drivers is a real pain.

Prior Of Taize

everything but ME is fine by me

Agent Smith

ah window's me.....



the Bastard child of bill gates....



all i can say is.... what were they thinking?

azezil

ME is truely horrific... 2000's rock solid but soooo slow to boot, i likes XP pro (didn't at first tbh but once you get used to it, its nifty)

Static M.e.

2ooo pro

radiospan

Windows ME is incredibly bad, I don't know how they could release something so poor.

XP Pro's the best for me, but a clean install of Windows 98 SE can be very stable too, handy for older PCs.

kaimera

XP Pro. [just the lil things it has over Home Ed.]

98 lacks usb support without the cd iirc.

Stark

XP Pro
Windows 2000 close second

The 9x versions of Windows (95/98/ME) and Windows NT 4.0 were shit.

Capt'n Midnight

This one Windows RG
320KB

Capt'n Midnight

kaimera wrote:

XP Pro. [just the lil things it has over Home Ed.]

98 lacks usb support without the cd iirc.

Which one of the 5 different versions of windows 95 were you talking about ?
95 OSR2 could be upgraded with pathetic USB support..
98 SE has more USB drivers written for it but for some apps 98 is better because less disk access.

fatherdougalmag

But you've got to consider each release within its context. You can't have 2 PCs with Win95 on one and XP on the other and compare. As rough as Windows 95 was, it's probably the most significant release of all. Even the interface has stuck this far. In its day, it was the business compared to what went before. Similarly with NT4 (nobody's mentioned it?) it was ground breaking in its day and it too spawned 'technology' which is still found under the bonnet of today's XP's and W2K3.

Capt'n Midnight

fatherdougalmag wrote:

Even the interface has stuck this far.

:rolleyes: - 98 had a different interface and 2K and XP differ again.
use 98lite and copy the win95 explorer.exe to get a much faster interface for 98
first thing I do with XP is change all the settings back to 2K "classic" [note to M$ - when you change the interface every release the most recent one is not classic] Also note that the XP interface was dropped for 2003 server because real users don't like Fisher Price.

fatherdougalmag wrote:

But you've got to consider each release within its context.

yes - you are stuck with the OEM version that shipped with your PC. The cost of replacing it with a purchased copy of Windows is about the same as upgrading the motherboard/CPU to something twice as fast. which do you think would increase productivity more ??

fatherdougalmag wrote:

Similarly with NT4 (nobody's mentioned it?) it was ground breaking in its day and it too spawned 'technology' which is still found under the bonnet of today's XP's and W2K3.

with NT4 the main changes were that Server and Workstation could use the same drivers which you couldn't do in NT3.51 a possible reduction in stability if you used third party video drivers (Ring 0 and all that) Internet Explorer and all it's holes. Also from a remote management view point you could not use VNC to sent CrtlAltDel with 3.51 , and a lot of 3.51 made it into NT4 - yeah the interface changed, but as MSBlaster showed lots of old stuff remaining.

Win95 was significant. They Killed off Dos to do it. Otherwise we'd have had DOS 7 a multitasking 32 bit OS. But then we wouldn't have moved to windows and microsoft wouldn't have been able to shaft it's competitiors by forcing them to use documented API's while they used every trick in the book to get Office 95 running - remember it was multitasking - as long as the only other task you wanted to do was background print /RANT

SantaHoe

You might find these polls interesting
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=44165
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=73596

I think there are about 3 more huge OS polls, but I cba finding them.

PS. Don't let Boston see you asking which OS people like... it sets him off on one of his 'episodes'.

fragile

MS DOC & Windows 3.1 tbh, it all went down hill after that

Bebop

My favorite has to be Windows XP Pro SP2, but you need a good spec PC to run XP, for older PC's, Win98 second edition is still a good bet, if you do a clean install and apply the unofficial service Pack its very stable, the USP gives it the same look and feel as Windows 2000

Win98 Unofficial SP can be downloaded free here;
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

Infini

Have to say WinXP Pro is the best OS. Pretty reliable and much better than the home edition.

Sparky

I have to say windows XP Pro is the best, its way better than home edition and is more stable thats why more buisnesses use it and second on the list would be 2000 pro, slow to boot up as mentioned before but great stability plus alot of buisnesses still use 2000 pro.

tonky

Business use: XP pro / 2K pro.
Basic use: Win 95, 98SE.
No use: Win ME, which by some magic seems to be on every old packard bell that comes through the door with tales of woe attached. An unholy combination.
Favourite old dog: Win 3.11 (interesting hand-built networking setups).

Infini

You forgot XP home. That's no use as well. That takes up more RAM and is generally a lobotomised version of the Pro edition. Not to mention that XP Pro works much better than Home from personal experience.