Did Microsoft ever release a bad version of Windows?

**InsaneNutter** · 04-02-09, 10:40

After reading replies to an article on the internet saying Vista is horrible and is the modern version of Windows Me, it got me thinking.

Looking back at Windows 95/98/ME there was nothing wrong with any of the OS’s at the time, I’m sure many people will disagree but it’s easy to look back and say yes Windows back then was crap. Yes older versions of Windows are crap by today’s standards but at the time I don’t think it was the case, even for Windows Me. Windows 95 was a massive update to Windows back in the day, Windows 98 improved upon Windows 95 and included all the updates various Windows 95 revisions had along with new features and better hardware support.

Then along come Windows ME, the OS the majority of people love to hate, I’ve never understood what was really wrong with it compared to Windows 98, sure it crashed a lot but no more so than Windows 98, at least for me. It included a few good features for the time in my opinion, system restore was very handy, I was also quite big on Windows Movie Maker, Its not the best application in the world but as I had just got a webcam back then it was a nice addition to have in Windows and I had many hours of fun playing about with it. I think the main problem was you didn’t really need Windows Me as everything that worked in Me worked in 98.

Windows XP was also hated by many when it was first released, XP was the first Windows OS that had moved away from the 9x kernel aimed at home users. This caused a lot of driver problems as drivers for Windows 98/Me just didn’t work in XP. Once good drivers were released and broken programs were patched I’m sure many will agree XP became for OS of choice, the facts speak for them self’s, released in 2001 and still going strong in 2009....

Vista had driver problems when released too, a lot of drivers had to be re written due to the vast changes made in Vista which caused a lot of problems at first, I think it’s fair to say the majority of driver problems have been ironed out of Vista now. Vista is the first 64bit Windows OS to gain mainstream support by companies, unless your hardware is very old it should work in 64bit editions of Vista perfectly.

The push to 64bit was needed with PC’s coming with 4gb+ of ram as standard these days so drivers would have to have totally been re done at some point anyway, Vista just brought this forward a bit.

If anyone has actually bothered reading all this I would be interested to know what you think, I’m sure many of you will disagree but this could be an interesting topic.

To sum up I wouldn’t say there’s really a bad versions of Windows, however I do think some versions such as 98 second edition and Windows ME were just released to get Microsoft some extra cash, they had a few new features but nothing you couldn’t live without.

Discuss

**Nimrod** · 04-02-09, 11:55

Windows ME couldnt survive 2 hours of constant use, Windows 98 lasted almost up to 24 hours before it died. Or at least that's how I experienced it

The Windows Vista comments people make seem a little stupid to me, I have people I know who act like they know computers yet criticise vista and make out XP is the best thing since sliced bread. They must have selective memory because I remember all the same when XP was released... Sadly looks like Vista is going to get short lived with the release of Windows 7 which means I doubt Vista will ever get time to recover its negative image from those people.. Though just remember Windows 7 is just Vista with some tweaks and new features.

**Icharus_Falling** · 04-02-09, 17:45

i was selling computers at the time windows ME was released, and there wasnt any big announcement or advertising campaign on microsoft's part, computers just started showing up with windows ME on them.

the problem with ME?

it was not an upgrade. there were no significant hardware changes at the time (like there is now with the move to 64 bit), and it looked, to the consumer, to be exactly like windows 98, except it crashed all the damn time. i mean weird crashes too, like all of the sudden, it couldnt recognize standard PS2 mice or keyboards, and constant blue screens. i dont think it was on the market for more than 6 months.

to this day, i dont understand the reason behind Microsoft releasing windows ME, other than trying to profit from poeple liking "new" things.

most people (like my dad, for instance) hate vista because they were so used to XP, and vista has a different look.

thats it.

"this doesnt work the same as the old thing did, so it sucks"

99% of the vista haters dont know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to computers.

also, here in my part of the U.S., none of the businesses switched to or are planning to switch to vista. simply because there would be such a clusterfuck of confusion and downtime for poeple trying to navigate around an unfamiliar OS, seeing as how the modern business world was practically built on XP (its been around as the standard since 2001).

also, i'd like to point out that the forum spellchecker did not flag the word clusterfuck, which is pretty cool. does that come standard in the spellcheck dictionary, or did you add that? =D