But unlike earlier versions of Windows NT, 2000 was a perfectly usable home version of Windows NT for the first time. As a “professional” version of Windows, it didn’t get the splashy coverage of its consumer counterpart Windows Me. Windows 2000 is an underrated masterpiece-a taste of a stable and more mature Windows that felt ahead of its time for early adopters. RELATED: Windows 95 Turns 25: When Windows Went Mainstream #2: Windows 2000 (2000) Few software products have ever been as essential in their time. It is the archetype of Windows, distilled: Anyone familiar with Windows today could easily go back and use Windows 95 without any trouble. Windows 95 introduced many Windows standards that we take for granted today, including File Explorer, Windows keyboard shortcuts, the Recycle Bin, file shortcuts, the modern desktop, and more. #3: Windows 95 (1995)įor many PC users, Windows 95 was when “Windows the Microsoft software product” became “Windows the must-have desktop OS.” It was beautiful and easy to use, and included the innovative Start menu and taskbar, arguably surpassing Macintosh OS for the first time in usability. And run it they did, with many XP fans unwilling to upgrade away from XP for a very long time. With XP, many PC users were upgrading away from the unstable MS-DOS roots of Windows 98 and Me for the first time.Īlong the way, they got a taste of rock-solid Windows NT tech, since the average PCs had just recently become powerful enough to run it well. RELATED: Windows 10 Is Great, Except for the Parts That Are Terrible #4: Windows XP SP2 (2004)Įven if you didn’t like the green-and-blue motif of XP’s default interface, there was something very magical about Windows XP to many consumers: stability. As the “ last version of Windows,” we can expect 10 to keep growing and changing over time as the world changes with it. Today, Windows 10 is a mature, stable, competent, and very popular OS with over a billion users. But to Microsoft’s credit, the firm has addressed those concerns over time and has continued to update Windows 10 at a steady pace over the past five years. Windows 10 got off to a shaky start with press criticism over suspicious telemetry phoning home to Microsoft, built-in advertising, and forced updates interrupting people’s work. RELATED: 30 Years of 'Minesweeper' (Sudoku with Explosions) #5: Windows 10 (2015) Windows for Workgroups took everything great about 1992’s popular Windows 3.11-TrueType font support, multimedia support, document embedding with OLE, and Minesweeper among them-and added native networking support, making it the most potent consumer and small business version of Windows until Windows 95. Unfortunately, Windows 98 proved wildly unstable, but that didn’t keep it from being a popular upgrade for consumers. The “Second Edition” release in 1999 added a selection of improvements (including better USB support) that kept many using 98 until Windows XP was released in 200-skipping right over Windows Me. Its rock-solid stability (after some patches) made it Microsoft’s most popular business and academic OS for years, and dedicated NT4 users were reluctant to upgrade as late as 2003. If you take the stability of the 32-bit Windows NT kernel and add the very user-friendly interface of Windows 95 on top, you have Windows NT 4.0. And under the hood, Windows 8 was Windows 7 with a lot of overlooked security improvements. The result wasn’t the best for desktop users-ditching the Start menu was a mistake-but Microsoft did fix some glaring issues in Windows 8.1. The result was a hybrid OS that could work both on tablets and desktops. Despite poor critical reviews, Windows 8 was the most innovative version of Windows since Windows 95, daring to face the encroaching world of touch-based mobile devices like the iPad head-on. RELATED: Windows 3.0 Is 30 Years Old: Here's What Made It Special #9: Windows 8 (2012)Ĭhange is hard, and Windows 8 made a radical departure from tradition that left many people upset. It also introduced Solitaire, which doesn’t hurt. It also included a stunning new graphical interface with a 3D-shaded look and a suite of gorgeous icons designed by graphic design legend Susan Kare. Windows 3.0 unified the confusingly named Windows 2.x family of products (Windows 2.03, Windows/286, Windows/386, etc.) into a single environment that worked on machines ranging from low-speed 8088s to those with 386 CPUs. With that out of the way, let’s get ranking! #10: Windows 3.0 (1990) Mobile operating systems like Windows CE, Windows Phone, Windows Mobile 10, and Windows RT are another beast entirely, as are server versions of Windows like Windows Server 2003. To keep things simple, we only considered desktop versions of Windows.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |