I remember that era when windows 8 came out, and everyone was like, Nah and used windows 7 for 3 more years

"Windows ME sucks!" "Have you ever even used it?" "Of course not! Why would I use an OS that sucks?"

I had an after school job at a small shop fixing computers back in the early 2000s. With almost every Windows ME PC that came in, standard procedure was to salvage what we could in terms of personal data from the hard drive, then installing Windows 98.

The flaws you point out for the "Incompatible Timesharing System" applied to every single operating system back in the '60's. Things like hierarchical file systems, long file names, basic security etc didn't begin to exist until the '70's, and weren't universal for a long time after that.

1:15 Windows XP = Xtremely Popular

ChromeOS should have been on the list. -Chromebook user

With Vista the problem came from the fact that it would brick lower-end computers - even newer ones. It didn't play well with the budget laptop I was using for college work, which even came with it pre-installed on the machine - so there was no getting out of it at that point. 8 *ran* decently enough, however that tablet style start menu was absolutely unusable for me. All the icons were too big and too spaced out for me to really "read" it properly; it might have been better on a laptop, but the sheer size of the text and buttons on a desktop screen just made it look like a bad piece of pop art and completely unfit for use. A lot of the time I just had to use the search function. Or just dig through the file explorer. Yep, digging through files was *easier* than trying to navigate windows by andy warhol

Back in the day we used WinMe to test the hardware when we installed batches of PC's because installation was the quickest. We had to test every USB port. About 30% of the systems crashed when plugging/unplugging an USB mouse. It was THAT bad.

windows thiojoe edition nothing works but thiojoe has a fake tutorial for everything

I never had any issues with ME, but I was a kid back then. Just wanted to play rollercoaster!

Remote Desktoping into Windows 8 internationally was one of the most painful experiences I've had. The RDP (in basic onrelease 8), forced you into the mobile touchscreen interface with just mouse emulated as touch. So no cursor, you had to basically guess where to click to force it back to desktop mode. On a good connection this wasn't too bad, but over a laggy connection to a client using hotel or airport wifi on the other side of the world who wanted something fixing or configuring asap before their meeting... extremely frustrating

MSDOS 3.3 changed my life. In 1984 that's all you had for IBM personal computers. I taught myself assembler using the Debug command in MSDOS. From that I got a hold of a copy of MASM and furthered my assembler learning using the Macro Assembler. I'm sure I could have done the same using the Apple ][e Monitor program. Incidentally a couple of years later when I was in high school my math teacher let me use his Apple ][e he had in the classroom. I used the Monitor program to teach myself 6502 assembler :P. It just so happened my parents bought a PC. If they had bought an Apple or C64 I'm sure I would have found similar tools there. Oh, and 4.0 did suck.

Fun fact: Window Vista was usually commonly known as Window sVista (meaning windows mistake/overlook) here in Italy because of how bad and initially highly distributed it was

I never actually used Vista. Jumped from XP to 7, those were the best ones.

You forgot all the bad MacOS version? 6 and 7 were NOTORIOUSLY unstable and the "bomb" (basically the white cross in a red circle equivalent from Windows) was a common thing. For going "Worst OS Ever" and leave out MacOS from the Non-Steve Jobs era kind of disqualifies you from judgement . . .;) EDIT: Also, Windows 7 is still internally 6.x, it IS Vista.

I recall working at Best Buy in 1999 (at the Computer Dept.) and seeing the fiasco unfold due to the confusion by consumers walking in wanting to upgrade their OS. To 99.9% of them, the intuitive choice was to grab the box that read Windows 2000. They just had no idea it was meant as un upgrade to Windows NT. Having said that, there is one area worth giving credit to ME: The OS was FINALLY compatible with many webcams, which started coming out after Win 98 and were a pain in the arse. Newer printers and scanners were also a lot easier to install and many of them had the drivers already in the OS which finally brought the so called Plug-and-Play to reality. So for teenagers, and college students wanting to actually use these newer gadgets, ME was a far better choice than 98.

I remember an internet cafe in our town which had Windows ME on every PC. Any time you visit you could see at least one PC with a BSOD, usually 2-3 at the same time. This should say it all.

I never referred to ME as "Mistake Edition". It was "Major Error" in my house.

Windows Me had a bad reputation. I'm glad you pointed out that this came largely from people who never used it. It wasn't much different from Windows 98, but it DID implement a RESTORE function. That meant that when your OS crashed (and it used to happen a lot) you could restore your computer to a time when everything was working well. Reputation be damned, THAT was a big improvement over Windows 98.

The only thing people don't like Win 8 is because they don't like the new Start menu interface, but otherwise they're fine.

WindowsME: "Mistake Edition" *Windows98SE: "Windows SIKE Edition"*

I had an ME box that lasted for years! It was buggy at first, but after a couple service packs, it worked great. I used it for a long, long time and only replaced it when it got so old that the software I needed to use wouldn't run on it.

As a long time Mac user, Mac OS 8.5 and 8.6 where very buggy and crashed frequently. The classic os was on it last legs , so many extension patches and helper apps slowed anything down. It could not do multitasking and no protected memory. So many stuck watch icons pointers. Bit map interface

"Microsoft sues them, loses, pays them $20M". The American Dream.

Windows Xp Never dies,That cool start-up sound Gives me shivers.Good old days.

11:02 Windows 8.1 also has the Charms bar. My problem with it is not that the charms were unintuitive or that I didn't know how to access those things, but that they would sometimes come up unbidden and get in the way when all I wanted to do was access something on the right hand side, like a vertical scrollbar.

Ever since I migrated from Windows to using Linux for most tasks, it has all been happiness ! I do have a windows machine for playing games , because of well the DirectX and virtually all games are written to run on it. Not much gaming on Linux. But for general browsing, email, programming, and most tasks (other than games ) , linux reigns supreme in my mind.

I saw the thumbnail for this video and my heart almost stopped because I thought I saw windows XP in the trash can.

Windows 8 was so bad that one night when I was 11, I literally installed windows 10 on my family's PC without permission because I hated it so much. I got grounded for it cuz my parents aren't good with computers and they were angry that everything changed but I think it was worth it to get rid of windows 8.

8:20 I had that very computer case. I don't know if the components are the same, but I remember doing the same kind of stuff seen here, with various upgrades. Nostalgic stuff.

Another different impression about win8. My wife's family had been running a convenient store and had bought a Lenovo PC with Celeron CPU and 2GB memory. The Win8 system worked smoothly. But when I downgraded the OS to Win7, every time after logging-in, the system would freeze and take quite some time to respond to your operations of clicking the mouse or hitting the keyboards. So that less resource consumptions compared with win7, might be a merit for win8.

My father calls windows vista "windows svista". "Svista" (also σβήσ' τα) is a greek word that means delete them lol

0:20 7. Windows ME (2000) 2:08 6. MS-DOS 4.0 (1986) 3:48 5. Incompatible TimeSharing System (1960s) 5:54 4. JavaOS (1996) 7:52 3. Windows Vista (2006) 10:03 2. Windows 8 (2012) 12:49 1. Lindows (2001)

My mother bought a Gateway PC back in 2000. She asked me to come over and set it up for her. I got everything out of their boxes, hooked up the PC and pressed the power button. I booted to the desktop and immediately blue screened. I knew from then on it was going to suck.

Back in the day, I had Lindows on a bootable CD ROM. I found it very useful in recovering deleted files on an MS Windows partition.

I used Windows Vista from 2007 up until 2016 when I could get a better PC, and I still absolutely love Vista

Look I remember parents getting a new PC with ME and when they finally decided to upgrade, they got one with Vista. Good times.

11:56 Windows Technical Preview added the Start Menu back as well as Metro apps in a Window

Great video! I would have expected OS/2 Warp in the list though 😄

Honestly, Windows 8.1 was like Vista SP2, it made the operating system viable.

My first custom pc ran windows 8.1, I actually really liked it, my hardware was far from quick, yet the UI on 8.1 actually felt snappy compared to 10

Lindows creators got 20 million dollars from Microsoft for changing the name of their product? That's probably more money than they ever dreamed of making by selling their stuff.

I liked Windows 8, though it took some getting used too and it upgraded within a few days and then I had the start button. So for me I'd take that one off the list and replace it with Nexus. Commonly used by schools and colleges as a network OS in the early 80's too early 90's the directory structure was terrible as it was linear and had no security. The front had some security as you had too log in, but one you were recognized you could access everyones directories, delete\copy programs and in a school environment, that caused a lot of trouble for teachers having to fix things.

I didn’t even know there were 7 operating systems

Also SpyOS must be included. Excuse me, ChromeOS

I like how you went back in time to cover older Operating Systems. One of the my theme papers in college was about ENIAC, BINAC and UNIVAC. I am surprised I never came across any references to that system you mentioned in the 1960's.

The name of the Incompatible Timesharing System is joke referencing the Compatible Time Sharing System, also from MIT. This is mentioned in the first paragraph of the wiki article about it, which as far as I can tell represents the entirety of the research done for that section of the video, so I'm not sure how he missed that

I saw Lindows and thought of what I’m currently running on some ancient PCs in the house…Q4OS. It’s a Linux distribution that reminds me heavily of Windows XP and also has the graphic prompts of installing applications but actually works extremely well!

Always really easy to look back on what was on offer in the past. I remember when an OS could sit in 16k of RAM. The hardware limitations of the day dictated what was capable of being implemented, something commonly forgotten today.

The PDP series of computers were not "mainframes." They were mini computers designed for small companies that couldn't afford IBM 360's or CDC 3600's. They were also used as "switches" connecting dozens, or hundreds, of dumb terminals to the mainframe for early networking. This is how the Lawrence Livermore Lab's "Octopus" network was organized (with a CDC 7600 as the mainframe).

Have you ever seen Temple OS? I would like to know your thoughts on it if you can get a version up and running.

Well, MS has added a new one for this list. Windows 11 belongs at 2 or 3.

7:17 that thing looks like a tissue box

A lot of the screenshots you shared of JavaOS were actually IBM's OS/2 Warp v.4. IBM went all-in on Java as a desperate attempt to fill in the application gap in OS/2, but the two operating systems are completely different.

Hi! Windows ME was called "MüllEimer" in germany, which means garbage bucket.

ME was a tiny step forward in terms of functionality over 98 but much more unstable and crash prone. I used it a little at a friend's PC and witnessed it a few times. He hated it and only used it because the PC came installed with it. I, like most people, bypassed it straight to XP. This one, yes, was a huge improvement in every way next to 98. It was so good it made older PCs feel like new again.

Look windows vista was a disaster but it will forever be a place in my heart And it was the most prettiest version of windows

“Windows XP became xtremely popular “

I still miss the charms bar from 8.1. moving the cursor all the way right revealed a bigger size time on the left side. It was very convenient to check the time, as a low vision user a bigger time display ment a lot. There is no way in windows 11 to bring up a bigger time display that to in any location

I actually switched from Vista to OSX, I never really had too much problems with it but after testing out Windows 7 via Bootcamp it was clear why so many people disliked Vista.

I actually liked Vista. On semi decent hardware it ran fairly well, and it brought a huge number of quality-of-life improvements that we still use today. Drivers and compatibility are what really killed the OS. At the time I was working in a retail computer store (not big box, but similar), the number of devices that didn't have Vista drivers out of the box was simply shocking. Its almost like they didn't care (HP was notorious for this, 2 years after launch and they still weren't providing driver discs), combined with larger overall driver package sizes for Vista over XP, and still 56K modems being commonplace lead to it being a pain in the backside.

Anyone who used Windows ME in a VM and not installed to hardware doesn't know why it was truly hated.

Windows Vista was not that bad, ran it on company laptop for some time and it just worked, though windows 7 did run noticeable snappier on the same hardware. Biggest problem was that the driver model changed between XP an Vista and that caused the majority of the problems, by the time 7 came out most of those where sorted.. Must say that Windows XP and 7 remain my favorite Microsoft OS's, Windows 10 has some flaws and the biggest one is the fragile start-menu and the settings mess.

What about reactos? It seems that is never going to be finished. Btw Windows ME was not released between 98 and 98 SE, that was after SE

are humans considered operating systems tho, thats the real question..

An operating system I loved was called DMFIII (Data Management Facility). It had a built-in file management facility, so you could create a database application. Another unusual facility, was that from a terminal you could bypass the OS and create a machine code programme and do whatever you want. OK, security not great, but you could get into the bowels of the system and learn how it worked.

ITS got the "Incompatible" label as a spoof of the older operating system CTSS (Compatible Time Sharing System).

does anyone list any version of the mac os. linux or unix? or any other non windows os?

I remember when I first installed Windows 8 and started it up I was like “WTF happened to the start menu ????” Pathetic MS

Everyone knows the best operating system: Microshaft Winblows 98

I had the chance to have a demo of JavaOS and the Hot Java browser on Sun France headquarters. Compared to our regular PC, it was laggy and moreover it crashed superbly and repepetitively. The system price was very "Sunny", laughable to say the least...

Who remembers when their family computer on Windows Vista had that windows logo shine thing on bootup?

I still remember very well the chaos around "Lindows" and the court cases around it. The court ruled that "indows" was too common/general for them to copywrite.

I have a question, I've been wanting to try out windows 7 how would i do that? And is it a good option?

Honestly, I miss my Windows 8 laptop, but it was touchscreen and honestly really easy to use with a touchscreen all I ever had to do was swipe a finger up the screen to get to start. It honestly just felt nice with the touch controls.

This video is basically digging into the cream of the crap.

I remember Windows 8. As a kid, the first computer I interacted with ran on Windows 7, and I eventually figured it out. Later, we got new computers that ran windows 8. I was very confused. The start screen was weird, and I tried to avoid it whenever possible, as well as the full screen apps.

2 things: 1) Windows Vista did all the dirty work for Win7 - because Vista did a complete overhaul below the surface. When Vista was launched, nobody was ready (DRIVERS!) - but when 7 came out, everyone was - 7 got all the credit. (note: i didn't use Vista) 2) I used 7 from the very beginning and was excited to use 8 from the very beginning: 8 felt so much more fluent. My workflow did not change: Whether I use 7/8/8.1/10/11 or a popular Linux distro: press Windows(super)key -> calc -> enter -> my calc pops up? :)

Didn't IBM have a PC operating system out around the late 80's or early 90's? I vaguely remember trying it that was as far as I went with it, just remember it crashing a lot.

Best part of Vista was Aero and the Start menu.

I actually liked Vista over W7. I built my own system and turned off UAC , so I had none of the slowdown issues most people experienced. Only worked on ME once, and it was an utter pain to fix. I could see why that one was so hated.

If I recall correctly, MS-DOS 4 introduced a more graphic surface and QBASIC. It also allowed to use better configuration and extended memory. And was used for the first Windows apps without a true Windows environment.

I do have windows vista on one of my old laptops, running nicely... Though to be fair, i had to restore it to factory settings 3 times during first year of use before i was able to finally configure it so that it wouldn't break again...

We knew the "ME" part in Windows Me as "Many Errors".

The main reason why the UAC prompt came up so much in Windows Vista was because programs for XP and earlier assumed your had administrators privilege's and tried to edit files that were outside of the programs own directory or the users data folder. This would automatically trigger UAC. Windows 10 will trigger it as well if a program tries to do this. As third party software was updated, the issue slowly went away. The main issue wasn't an operating system issue but third party software companies not following what Microsoft told them to do back in 1995 when Windows NT came out.

MS DOS 3.3 had also mouse support with the right drivers back then. It’s not starting by 4.0. I used a mouse at my Schneider Euro PC with MS DOS 3.3.

Back in the day, I ordered an IBM ThinkPad that was supposed to come with WinME pre-installed. However, I chose an option to have Windows 98 installed instead. Interestingly, history repeated itself just a month ago. I ordered a new high-end laptop, but chose to have Windows 10 pre-installed instead of Window 11. The more things change….

I went from 7 directly to 10. Luckily before all there changes made to shrink the control panel, I'm sad that 20H2 won't have the typical screen to move to a domain and many in our office were confused till one found it and showed it to us.

"I don't use the Windows key anyway" Win E, Win R, Win X, Win 1, Win2, Win D, Win period, Win and type to search. How can someone live without these shortcuts?😂

Vista was too ahead of its time, and never got a chance to be popular. I do still use it for fun myself on a triple-booted laptop of mine where I have XP, Vista, and 7. Windows 8 was also not horrible though. Once I got used to it, it felt great, and it ran so fast. I have an old Pentium 4 Dell OptiPlex GX620 desktop, and it's so fast. It's so old too.

Wow, agree agree. Vista was disappointing on release & I was an immediate adopter (always a terrible idea - MS used us, meaning initial adopters, as beta testers, but they always do. Wait until first major update before buying into new MS OSs). It became good, just as you say, but OS 7 & Win XP were gold in their day. Dos 4 - not a patch on Dos 3.3. It was stable enough to run Win 3.1 on top of when that came out. Lindows made a splash on release - I think we were all heartily sick of MS at that point & their vaporware tactics and all the blue screens of death. Win ME, I tried to use that for a while before going to Win XP on home computers, but I put my company onto Win2000. I had used Win NT4 extensively & knew it was a more stable platform than 95, 98, or ME. I didn’t use computers until 1977, so too young for ITS! Anyway, a very well researched video and amazingly accurate considering you weren’t there for the 70s-90s OSs and the horribly slow super expensive computers we had to contend with back then. Gratz!

Java slow? It was called Java so you can go to Starbucks and get a bit of coffee while it tries to do anything!

Windows vista has one of the best looking desktop ,start menu, taskbar

i love how i thought my old pc was a Windows 10 computer until its hard drive failed. We had to reset the system and it turned out to be a Windows 8 computer, which i think is okay. However, i didnt use it much because the computer eventually broke the day after thanks to the hard drive failing, it was a all-in-one PC

I got a Vista through a new pre-build with a Core Q6600 and something Radeon... with a decent CPU and non-Nvidia card...So I never knew it was considered bad/prone to crash.

Had Window 8 and 8.1, remember downloading a Classic Shell program that gave it the windows 7 look returning the windows in the corner. I remember reading an article that Classic Shell was boasting millions and millions of downloads since so many users hated the windows 8 and 8.1 look, made the jump to windows 10 as soon as I could

There was one good thing about Windows ME. It was cheap and gave you a valid upgrade path for the next Windows Operating System.

You missed OS/2. The servers of those would crash constantly and require reboots.

To my mind, a good operating system is one where you have full control over it and everything just works. I don't want operating systems that delete files, change settings without my permission, force updates, NEED frequent updates, and is in-your-face.

I've had a computer ran Windows me and it wasn't that bad