This photo has been floating about the interwebs for the past couple of days. I’d have marked Windows 3.1 as “shit” and Windows 95 as “good” myself, but that would’ve ruined the pattern.
Update, September 21, 2011: My friend Hector Kearns points out that Windows 2000 is conveniently missing from the list, which would make two good versions in a row and breaks the good/shit pattern.
13 replies on “We’ll Know For Sure Next Year [Updated]”
Wait, where’s Win2k, possibly the best of the bunch?
Then again win 2k wasn’t a consumer release, was it?
Win2k was really geared towards the Enterprise as a direct replacement for Windows NT 4. This list seems to be geared towards the consumer releases in which case both the NT lines and W2K should be excluded.
Windows 2000 was from a different product family, back when they still split home and professional OSen into two different product lines instead of flavours of one. If you put in Windows 2000, you have to also put in Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0, and you destroy any semblance of linearity, since many of these products will have suddenly existed simultaneously. Windows 98 -> Windows ME -> Windows XP is a perfectly reasonable progression if you’re talking about the linear release of consumer Windows versions. If you’re talking about business versions, then it should go Windows 3.1 -> Windows NT 3.5 -> Windows NT 4.0 -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP, and not mention 95/98/ME at all.
Windows 3.1 was great.
Windows 95 had it’s share of bugs, but was a huge step forward.
Windows 98 was released to fix all the bugs in Windows 95, but introduced more of them in the process and added very little value otherwise (I know, I know it added built in USB support) because it wasn’t that special
Windows 2000 again was a huge step forward and I ran it as a home OS just fine for 5 years thank you very much.
Windows XP was good
Windows Vista was bad
Windows 7 *IS* great
Windows 8 probably is going to be bad. Copying the iPod isn’t a step forward for the Desktop OS market.
Windows ME was (supposed to be) the consumer verison of Windows 2000. It sucked so badly that many just went with Win2K which is still my favorite Windows OS.
Windows 8 – Goood!=)
Hmmm… judging by this whole Metro UI thing going on in Windows 8 I’m expecting it to be a flop on desktops but great for tablets.
I agree with mitchn it will be good for phone and tablets but desktops so not much
Windows 8 is just Windows Phone ported to desktops and tablets. It makes some sense for tablets, but for desktops it’s just a huge mistake.
[…] in September 2011, I posted this image in an article titled We’ll Know For Sure Next Year, and it’s been getting a lot of hits […]
Win 98 *first* edition SUCKED. Win 98 SE (second edition) was fine. They are two different beasts.
Windows 3.1 was a turd. Windows 95 was playing catchup with other operating systems like Amiga OS and Mac OS. Windows 98 was mostly bug fixes and grafting on network connectivity. Me was a mixed bag, but for users of Windows 2000 it seemed pointless. XP was a successor to 2000, not Me.
Vista was just a mess, not really ready for release. Too many crashes and problems. Visually it was a beautiful improvement over XP.
Windows 7 is just Vista with bug fixes. Seriously, people. It’s a bloated, bulky beast.
Windows 8 is revolutionary in many ways. People don’t want to learn the new Metro interface, and that’s fine. It’s mostly designed to embrace the future. Everyone knows we’re transitioning to touch screens. New laptops all have them. Your phones have them. Your tablets have them. This interface was designed to make touch screens work with Windows. It’s smart. If you don’t like it, graft on the Classic Start Menu for free and it’s just like the older versions of Windows, except leaner and faster. Windows 8 is faster than Windows XP or Windows 7. It boots in a third of the time it takes for 7 to boot. For people who want speed, it’s an upgrade. Embrace it.