In your opinion, what are the best/worst versions of Microsoft Windows?

[Micro-Scopic Soft-ware]

On 1/25/2021 at 5:08 AM, VistaEX said:

I Have Switched To  8.1 because Of Drivers Getting Harder To Find And It Is Pretty Good With Classic Shell and a lot of tweaking

Use snapy drivers

[sunryze]

Windows 10 is the worst because of its scheme to make computers dumber than they actually are. You can't even undo this change without modifying system files. Even after that, there is still a fair bit of the OS which is unfinished, even 6 years after release.

Windows 7 is probably the best (may be some bias!) because the UI was simple, elegant and easy to use. All your settings are in Control Panel, file explorer is simple, the start menu isn't littered with ads, the lock screen isn't full of ads, and you have control over your PC. They even give you diagnostic information on blue screens so you know what actually went wrong, but I could say that the Windows 10 one also brings the same amount of information, just less explaining.

Windows XP was also pretty nice, although I never really used it much.

Every OS will suck when it comes out. Believe me, XP did, Vista did, 8.x did, and 10 did even more. But all of them fixed their issues in service packs / feature updates. XP SP2 was one of the best, Vista SP1 fixed a lot of issues as well as 7 SP1. 8.1 itself was a fix to Windows 8.0. I had hopes that Windows 10 would, but now here we are, 10 releases into Windows 10 and people are still angry about it. While most people have fallen to the gigantic corporation that is Microsoft, I can definitely see that there is a community of people standing their ground here.

Unfortunately, Windows 10 has locked me into its ecosystem after my almost 6 years of using it, so I am basically at a loss. Any move I make is a compromise, such as migrating to Linux or downgrading to 7. 

A lot of people don't like 10. They didn't use it willingly, something forced them or influenced them to, unlike previous versions of Windows.

[UCyborg]

Encountered most glitches with 8 (and 8.1) so that's what I'm picking for the worst. Can't decide on the best, too many things wrong with each version.

7's the oldest I can tolerate for daily use. That was before multi-monitor taskbars were a native feature, so Actual Window Manager is a must. Of course this software is useful with older/newer Windows as well, it's just a bit more profound with older Windows. Though if you also like T-Clock Redux and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, can't use them on AWM's taskbars since it's essentially alien to them.

7's still many years before MS reworked their paging algorithm, can't say I like the fact that with my mere 4 GB of RAM, even when there's enough of it free, it still insists on putting junk to page file, which eventually results in slowness if you left something running in the background for a while and came back to it at a later point.

So 10's the first version with reworked paging algorithm, sane console windows that can be resized properly and even Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 software works 100% correctly on it. There was something odd on Vista - 8.1 that made certain system event sounds (I like sound feedback) not play all the time as long as HRTF effect (aka. Surround checkbox in the control app) was enabled. Apparently 10 was the first time since Vista when more work was put in the sound architecture (Low Latency Audio), didn't really expect the changes would have positive effect on X-Fi MB3.

[Molly Dawn]

worst, 10, then 8.1 then 8 in that order.

best Windows 7 and second best, windows ME.  Also gotta throw vista in there as one of the 'good' ones too, as what little experience I had with it showed a lot of potential. it just had driver issues on my old hardware, which ran fine and blazingly fast on ME.

I know a lot of people love XP and so compare 7 to XP, but I never messed with XP so I can't really comment, but there are certain things I still use windows ME for to this day (on real hardware not vM)

Edited September 8, 2022 by Molly Dawn

[mina7601]

Ignore my votes, I meant to vote Windows XP and Windows 7 as the best versions of Windows, and Windows 10 only as the worst version of Windows.

Anyway, the reason why I choose Windows XP and Windows 7 is because, they were simple to use, have a clean start menu, built-in Help content (unlike Windows 10's, which is mostly online), faster and snappier to use. and the file explorer for both OSes were much simpler. Vista was a bit complicated for me to use, and it looked like XP in most aspects, but just redesigned, while 7 is a complete redesign and rework.

I mainly prefer Windows 7 due to its new file explorer, start menu, and new taskbar features.

Edited September 9, 2022 by mina7601