Posted April 20, 2015
In DOS days, even versions of their OS were considered 'bad'. DOS 3.3 was the best, but 4.0 (from a source) ate the date on hard drives. 5.0 was awesome, but 6.0 had issues, the 6.2 had to step it up a bit.
Windows 3.1 was the best of its time too. Windows then decided to go by years.... 95, it was a great thing, Windows 98, not so highly accepted and Windows Millenium was like throwing something out in left field.
Windows NT was still active at the time and converging (funny how they are melding 'all' Windows into one), and Windows NT 3.51 was pretty solid while NT 4.0 with the Workspace shell was getting close to what was becoming Windows 2000.
Windows XP seemed to be that melding of the two, and Windows 2000 with Service Pack 6 was probably the closest thing to XP.
Windows Vista seemed to be a train wreck and they had to save that one by releasing Windows 7 ( a version I currently use and really like), until a bunch of Metro artists decided to turn it into their own art project and start melding it with tablets.
Thus came Windows 8 and 8.1 and 8.1 updates, it worked great for people who liked to touch their screen (for tablets, that's a given), but for monitors, I don't like looking through grubby fingerprints. I think they dropped the ball on the workflow between the 'desktop' and the 'tablet' user and they didn't really go through all the usability testing for desktop users.
Now we have Windows 10, I think they learned their lesson, it's a better hybrid of what they had and more friendly for tablet and desktop users. However, will your legacy software run on Windows 10?
Just as 16-bit Windows applications don't seemingly run on 32-bit Windows systems anymore, there may come a day when 32-bit applications won't run on 64-bit Windows. This is kind of the "move up, or move out" strategy one has to deal with in order to make sure their software can be ported and still working on new systems.
Sad, but true.
Disastrous it 'twas in its first incarnation, but Windows 98 SE was actually a very decent iteration of the OS back in the day, and could hold one over until the big day of Windows 2000/XP upgrade. I understood something similar happened with Vista's service packs but then by then the PR debacle made it too late for mass adoption. I predict Windows 7 to become the new "zombie OS" (heir apparent of Windows XP) that people cling tenaciously to, especially people who still primarily use laptop/desktop interfaces with their computers. Especially with businesses that bought a bunch of Windows 7 licenses en masse, again, like XP before it. I know it took forever to get my non-profit to participate in the mass upgrade just to get away from their aging, ancient desktop work XP computers because we were tied to these equally old, in-house computer programs coded for XP that we were running our day-to-day business on. By that time of course distributors were selling their new comps pre-loaded with Win 8 and 8.1.
For those not in the know, a software developer called IObit creates the best Start Menu replacement out there for Win 8 machines to emulate what you knew and loved about Windows 7 (or XP). It does a sterling job of clamping down and smothering all the metro crap too, if you're like me with zero interest in it. There are a bunch, but this (free) on is my favorite: Start Menu 8. We love it where I work; I spread it around like a case of cholera.
Post edited April 20, 2015 by MaridAudran
