>up to a year after release, many gamers still recommended Windows 98. Why? Mostly due to compatibility where things a Voodoo card and a Soundblaster running in MS-DOS were preferable for many titles, and this is something that simply wasn’t on offer with XP.
Actually, mostly since Wxp was slow as a dog compared to W98, because W9x still had direct control of the hardware rather than the sluggishness-inducing Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that NT has always had inserted between the OS and the devices.
W95 was noticeably faster than W98 was too, and both of course move like lightning-speed compared to W10 whose 64bit drags compared to W10-32bit, and W11 is more embarrassing as it continues to further slow with each update (almost every month now rather than only once per year), which makes W10 seem like it was a quite a bit less encumbered than W11.
95 and 98 were roughly the same speed; any differences would likely be due to drivers. The main difference between the 9x and NT lineage is the former is actually a hypervisor for DOS VMs (and the GUI itself can be considered a DPMI application, running in its own VM) while the latter is a "full" OS with a very limited DOS emulator.
I know you can run microbenchmarks to show the increased pointer size of 64 bit Windows can cause a few percentage points of performance difference in certain scenarios but that doesn't jive with the statement "W10 whose 64bit drags compared to W10-32bit".
Also the fact that pre-SP2, Windows XP actually crashed (and permanently broke in "interesting" ways) more than Windows 98 in practice, theory be damned. I became so familiar with how to install Windows during this time ...
Yes, SP1 wasn't horrible if you could get it (but who can download something that big on dial-up?), but it still was not great.
MS had a pretty good thing going with 2000 and then XP. They they put a lot of effort into destroying that first with Vista and then Windows 8. I feel Windows has never recovered from there.
The Windows XP tour was peak Luna and peak Microsoft and represents the high point of all human technology.
It should have been represented in this article and it wasn't. Truly that's a crime against those who have not had the opportunity to experience it.
I have the Windows XP tour music. I keep it in my library and listen to it. You can find WAV files if you know where to look. I keep the OOBE music in the same album (both the original and remastered versions).
Through this incredible multimedia presentation I had the opportunity to learn about wizards and how Windows XP is best for business. I think there was also something in there about how to open a window. Also, it had that beautiful compass icon and those unmarked Luna-style colored buttons that were used to select each section of the tour. They were my favorite part.
Windows XP was pretty amazing. I remember installing it on my work PC and it found all the printers on the network and automatically installed them.
Windows XP also had perfect timing for the beginning era of broadband and a generation spending hours on their computers.
You only need to look at the leadership at Microsoft who were in charge of Vista and Windows 8. They were “suits” who didn’t understand “mobile”, which was arguably confusing at the time. I vividly remember watching the release videos of Windows 8 and the interviews of the leadership clearly showed they had no concept of what they were doing.
An OS should be extremely boring. It’s an app launcher and file organizer. An OS shouldn’t be flashy. That’s why people have fond memories of Windows 2000 and XP.
Windows 10 can also be extremely boring if Open Shell is installed and some other tweaks. Same thing with Windows 11.
Absolutely nothing Windows XP is "peak Microsoft", least of all the Neptune UI, which foreshadowed the terminally ugly Apple and Android UIs of today at least in color composition (Clickibunti as we say in German). Immediately switched to a modified Classic Theme.
Absolutely loathed moving from 98 to XP. The stability wasn't much better, the resources were hogged more, and the default toys-r-us theme was an incredible eyesore (thank god for UX hacks). It was overall so much pain but Vista was even worse in many respects so I kinda weathered it until 7 came along, and that one was insanely good.
What a cool article to have at the 30th anniversary of Windows 95's release (24th of Windows XP's).
Windows XP was about the time I started moving away from Windows more definitively, even as a secondary OS. It was the product activation crap. My OS on my computer should serve ME, not be beholden to the vendor after I put it on. Of course, we didn't realize back then how bad things could/would get...
So for that reason, I'm not really nostalgic about Windows XP, or subsequent versions, the way some people are.
Although it is interesting to see what many now consider to be the bad ideas of Windows 8, get their start in "Neptune"...
Peak Windows XP was Server 2003. I ran it as a daily driver on a ThinkPad. It could do pretty much everything XP could but had a closer UI to Windows 2000.
> For 64bit versions, both AMD64 and Itanium, support ended on the 30th of June in 2005.
Even Apple would not deprecate an OS two months after its release. The AMD64 version was supported until 2014, the same as the x86 version. Itanium was a dumpster fire, and anyone who had any Itanium hardware would probably want Server 2003 anyway.
Hot take but XP is only remembered fondly in this community because it was the dominant operating system from 2001 through 2011 on consumer devices that were likely purchased as first or second generation home computers for millenials that are approaching their first 25 year retrospective.
Microsoft also created a Zune theme which makes the start button orange and the taskbar and many other things black. It’s the only theme I use on my XP installs!
One correction that I can't leave on the actual article (subscriber only!) is that I'm certain multi-screen support worked on Windows 98. Excellent article as usual though!
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 52.5 ms ] threadActually, mostly since Wxp was slow as a dog compared to W98, because W9x still had direct control of the hardware rather than the sluggishness-inducing Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that NT has always had inserted between the OS and the devices.
W95 was noticeably faster than W98 was too, and both of course move like lightning-speed compared to W10 whose 64bit drags compared to W10-32bit, and W11 is more embarrassing as it continues to further slow with each update (almost every month now rather than only once per year), which makes W10 seem like it was a quite a bit less encumbered than W11.
But boy are they sure fast.
But I wouldn’t daily drive one.
Yes, SP1 wasn't horrible if you could get it (but who can download something that big on dial-up?), but it still was not great.
> Windows Whistler/2002/XP logo design concepts by Frog Design
I like how there's a vestige of “Windows 2002” in the little “Version 2002” on the bottom right of all the XP RTM packaging, which disappeared from the later SP2-integrated boxes: https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/-mm-/0e422e4a7e951800d133d6d73...
It should have been represented in this article and it wasn't. Truly that's a crime against those who have not had the opportunity to experience it.
I have the Windows XP tour music. I keep it in my library and listen to it. You can find WAV files if you know where to look. I keep the OOBE music in the same album (both the original and remastered versions).
Through this incredible multimedia presentation I had the opportunity to learn about wizards and how Windows XP is best for business. I think there was also something in there about how to open a window. Also, it had that beautiful compass icon and those unmarked Luna-style colored buttons that were used to select each section of the tour. They were my favorite part.
I miss those days.
Windows XP also had perfect timing for the beginning era of broadband and a generation spending hours on their computers.
You only need to look at the leadership at Microsoft who were in charge of Vista and Windows 8. They were “suits” who didn’t understand “mobile”, which was arguably confusing at the time. I vividly remember watching the release videos of Windows 8 and the interviews of the leadership clearly showed they had no concept of what they were doing.
An OS should be extremely boring. It’s an app launcher and file organizer. An OS shouldn’t be flashy. That’s why people have fond memories of Windows 2000 and XP.
Windows 10 can also be extremely boring if Open Shell is installed and some other tweaks. Same thing with Windows 11.
Windows XP was about the time I started moving away from Windows more definitively, even as a secondary OS. It was the product activation crap. My OS on my computer should serve ME, not be beholden to the vendor after I put it on. Of course, we didn't realize back then how bad things could/would get...
So for that reason, I'm not really nostalgic about Windows XP, or subsequent versions, the way some people are.
Although it is interesting to see what many now consider to be the bad ideas of Windows 8, get their start in "Neptune"...
My old coworker at my first company gave it to me, I worked in an old mill building that had a random room for IT storage.
I also got a very old FreeBSD mouse pad from there too! I'm not sure if I still have it around.
Even Apple would not deprecate an OS two months after its release. The AMD64 version was supported until 2014, the same as the x86 version. Itanium was a dumpster fire, and anyone who had any Itanium hardware would probably want Server 2003 anyway.
A true Microsoft masterpiece, back when they still remembered how to build something that didn’t need 17 updates before lunch.