Windows OS versions stick around for so long, each one needs two different tier rankings, "At Launch" and "Mature".

I loved Windows 7 and held onto it for dear life until about a year ago. I feel like 7 gave the most freedom with the least amount of hassle.

XP may be terrible objectively for many security and others, but for UI and Experience and other stuff, it was beautiful. All the bloat that I can tolerate and love. I found nothing unnessary that I hate about it. That why everyone have rose color glass. It was the best.

I started my IT career in a Windows 2000 environment and didn't realize how good those times were until much later.

the best thing about 95 was how random it/the installer was ... you could re-install it five times on the same machine and each time the error messages you got after the first boot-up were different ones. Fun times

I remember getting windows 2000 down to about 12megs in memory. Lots of great things there. We went from FAT to NFTS, Plug and play USB that worked, Active Directory, NT Kernel. Such a good time to be into computers.

95 , 98SE , XP , Win7 were all excellent for me. I think I used XP and 7 the most. I work with Vending Machines and we still have a lot with Windows XP Embedded running 24/7 like a charm. 😊

I'd love you to elaborate on Windows 2000's strength comparing to XP. What I mean is that I have a feeling that architecturally those weren't two different, the impression that the latter was a "virus magnet" might've come from the fact that it was much more widely used in the residential environment. In the end, many security features from 2000 found their way to XP and were actually improved with SP2. But maybe I'm wrong, I never used those "professionally"

Windows 2000 and XP was my favourite. XP needed tons of fixes and tweaks tho :(

As another comment said. It really needs to be launch vs "final product" list as so much happens during its life cycle. I would personally put Windows 8.1 up a tier. I just had a really experience on it. XP up a tier as well. Overall a solid list I can agree with!

98 SE was the best DOS-based WIndows, 7 was the best NT based one. Everything since 7 belongs where the sun don't shine.

Sorry, I blast you, Vista was cancer and had more bugs than XP.

I actually agree with you on Vista. The issue was that OEMs sold PCs with hardware well below what Vista required...they were preloading it on PCs with 256MB of RAM! I bought a cheap Vista laptop back in the day and after putting in a 2GB stick it ran fine. The main changes I'd make is that I'd move 10 to great, and 11 is borderline between average and good, although I'd put 11 over 8.1 so there's that.

Windows ME was kind of a rush job release due to the fact that people at the time thought Windows 2000 was the next version of Windows after 98SE. However it lacked a lot of compatibility; especially with games. With 2000 and XP, I still remember the nightmares of dealing with the Nimda and CodeRed viruses. Due to those affecting 2000 as well, I wouldn't put in in Excellent as the system would instantly get hit as soon as it went online without having SP3 installed on it. I had 2k advanced Server at the time and those viruses took down all 4 of the family computers running windows in the house; all stemming initially from the 2k advanced server install.

Win 2000 didn't have viruses because nobody used it. It didn't run half the software out there, and it couldn't talk to half the hardware out there.

My first computer had Windows Me. For me it was the best thing ever, despite the insane amount of problems it had, which I thought was normal and was always bugging the local IT guy who sold it to me for help. Looking back, I spent a lot of time fighting the OS and trying stuff and that's probably one of the reasons I ended up pursuing a career in IT, which led me to become a developer. So, thanks Windows Me for everything!

You skipped Windows NT 4 Workstation. I would put that in the Good category, and 2000 Pro in the excellent as well. I had great experience with 2000 Pro , and that was the version of Windows I switched to fully after 98se. The improvement of 2000 Pro over NT 4 workstation was obvious , USB support , better support for NTFS volumes greater than 8GB and you could boot off of NTFS completely. It was perfect. When XP came out , I really did not see any real improvement, but more of a slightly decrease when XP came out, because not only the dumb look they tried to push , but also started the whole phoning home to microsoft to verify your copy. I never upgraded to XP, it was meh at best.

I dunno man, I ran XP for a long time and I can't remember having any major issues with viruses. I went many years without having to ever reinstall the OS (maybe never?). I think it just depends on how responsible a user is in terms of downloading/installing random stuff and keeping your system properly maintained. I definitely installed some less-than-legit stuff back in the day, but I tried to keep up on housekeeping, scanning for viruses, etc. XP deserves a little more love IMO.

I think you are spot on with this tier list. I agree with where you placed each OS, and thinking of those systems both in how they were in their times and in retrospect. I like to experiment with Windows OS a lot, and hearing your opinions were really interesting.

I actually love the list, all but maybe 8.1. I feel like you're overlooking it as an 8 enhancement but in my experience it's more like a 98 to 98 SE type of upgrade. They gave back the computer to your hands and it wasn't as bloated and locked down as 10 which means you'd get the very best performance out of any windows OS while also having a fairly recent system. If it was called windows 9, it would have been so much bigger than 10, I am completely certain. It really took the best of 7 and 10 and failed for its poor marketing. Rest in peace sweet prince.

I could definitely agree with you on your decision with 11, I'm also running it and I would occasionally run into bugs as well with it after the updates. One thing that I am not all that big of a fan of in 11 is when doing the storage manager, it makes it not as easy to get rid of stuff as the old style disk cleanup did. I run on my system a dual-boot of Windows 11 and Ubuntu Budgiie 23.04. I'm curious to see how 12 will be when it is launced.

i like how windows early on went from bad to better then as we got more into the future it took a 180 and went from being good to getting worse

I remembered trying Windows 7 beta build up to release candidate version The best experienced I have in my core 2 duo laptop with 1GB DDR2 RAM what a memory

XP is good when you are REALLY careful, but it's true that XP broke with tons of virus, and the internet back then was -insecure- so any page can download random malware. But hey, thanks to breaking XP I learned about Linux (Ubuntu) because my uncle install it while he search for Windows 7 starter ISO

I'm typing this from a W7 machine... which is, not for much longer now, still my main machine. Not a tech professional, not a typical user either. I never got infected with any ransomware, didn't blindly install every update microsoft offered to me, particularly telemetry related stuff and windows 10 update nagging. this installation is probably running on 8 years or so now, and runs quite OK.

List is missing NT4.0, as for Win2k, SP3 really was it's sweet spot. As for 11, we are slowly being forced towards that in the G-sphere of influence, and.. no.. it's totally NOT ready for use in business, let alone government systems.

There is abaolutely ZERO excuses for Windows 11 to consume 4 gigs of RAM for itself. There is absolutely ZERO excuses for Windows 11 to send me advertisement (actually it's illegal, isn't it?) I use because I have no other choice.

For the most part I agree with this tier list, more than I thought that I would! My only change, personally, would be to put Windows 8 and 8.1 higher on the list. They felt really responsive, they kept a lot of the administrative menues from Windows 7 (as opposed to Windows 10 which increasingly over time started forcing the majority of administrative tools through the new Settings app), and while the full screen Start menu was off-putting for me in the very beginning, it is the only Start menu which I truly felt home with after I customised it, and I became so used to it that I did something similar with a full screen Start menu in Windows 10. Windows 8, to me, took the parts of Windows 7 that I was most fond of and made them feel familiar, yet perhaps more modernised. I have a lot of mixed feelings about Windows 10, and I like to say that it is the best Windows operating system released up to that point in time, simultaneously as being one of the very worst. Windows 10 improved and also introduced some really cool stuff, but over the years, I have felt allergic to Windows 10. Helping customers daily since its release, both in corporate environments and in a computer workshop, there are so many things which have caused a massive headache which I have never before seen in any Windows version prior, and I could go on about these all night. Unlike earlier Windows operating systems, Windows 10 underwent big changes under the hood twice a year, which meant that it would download the entire Windows operating system anew, install itself onto your harddrive/SSD, then afterwards try to migrate programs, settings and files seamlessly to the new revision. This went wrong much more than it should. If such a in-place (automatic and forced, mind you) upgrade failed, it was designed to seamlessly roll back to the previous revision, but often it would simply be stuck in a bootloop or on a blank screen. There were many corporate critical computers which would be forced to download the next revision upgrade, the operating system would crash and become unusable, and after forcefully managing to revert the upgrade via rescue media, it would immediately tell you that you needed the update and start re-downloading the big update, with a progress bar and no way to cancel it, despite it already having failed and fully crashed moments prior. Disabling Windows Update services and registry fixes would be reverted within a day as they were not seen as a setting, Windows viewed them as bugs. Furthermore, all blocks of known Windows sites and IP addresses in Windows Firewall and in the Hosts file would be ignored, still allowing communication to those sites. At one point in time, Windows calmed down, and disabling Windows Update services etc. often stayed that way, for a while at least. Well, until Microsoft decides to change that during an update again. At any rate, things became much better with and after revision 1909, as Microsoft made changes to its revisional upgrade system, thankfully. Windows 10 has also "mutated" a lot throughout the years, with the constant moving around and sometimes removal of useful administrative features so that we have to search for them, and then suddenly removed all-together in one of the updates, sometimes even re-introduced in a later update, without documentation. One feature I tended to use was ICS, which was removed as it was deemed unnecessary, but was later re-introduced through a separate update. Perhaps not the best of examples, but in all versions of Windows, including the first few revisions of Windows 10, you could right-click This PC (My Computer), click Properties, and you had a handy overview of the PC in the manner you were used to, with links to System Restore and Advanced System Settings. After a certain update, right-clicking This PC and clicking Properties would bring you to the new Settings app with a different summary page, but hitting Win + Break would still bring up the classic summary screen. After yet another update later on, the hotkey would also bring you to the new summary. Some updates later, the hotkey would bring up the classical menu. Why all these changes? Not able to stay the slightest persistent makes the system a royal pain to navigate! Another major pain was the fact that with Windows 10, System Protection (aka. System Restore) was for the first time *off by default*. I saw a few handful times when this was turned on, but for the most part, this was disabled, so if an update crashed your computer, you could no longer revert to a previous state. This also happened a lot with upgrading from Windows 7 and 8.1 to Windows 10. In 7 and 8.1, System Protection would naturally be enabled as this was always the default setting, while after Windows 10 was installed, the feature would be disabled, to save storage space presumably. But that is not to say that I hate everything about Windows 10. As I said, it is also excellent in some regards. (This could have been introduced in Windows 8, but I am fairly sure it was introduced in Windows 10, it certainly was not there in Windows 7 Home Premium / Professional) For the first time, you could actually do a disaster recovery by simply moving your system drive from one computer to another. With Windows 7 and earlier, you would typically encounter Stop errors and/or bootloops if you put a system drive in a different computer. Although you need to ensure that BIOS uses the correct HDD mode (AHCI/RAID/IDE) and correct BIOS mode (UEFI vs Legacy BIOS) Windows 10 intelligently notices a change in hardware, like motherboard and other base drivers, and reconfigures base drivers so that it can boot successfully in most cases. Drivers are also now much more seamlessly and quickly installed, often without user intervention. Although the following were introduced in Windows 8 or 8.1, product keys now are converted to digital licenses, so if you re-install the same edition as before, Windows should now activate automatically upon Internet connectivity, and not require you to type in your product key manually. Speaking of product activation, it is also possible to use Windows 10 without activating, if you do not mind certain restrictions that may apply to you (you may be unable to change the desktop wallpaper, and there will likely be a watermark on your desktop wallpaper and in the Settings app telling you that you have not yet activated). That is just at the top of my head that I can think of right now, my mind is tired and I am two minutes from heading into sleep. Windows ME was truly awful, it only gave me a few Stop errors a day on a good day. It was an interesting mess of an operating system, though. I heard one of the reasons it was so unstable was that it was an in-between mix between Windows 98 and Windows 2000, and that drivers were very poorly written. Like you, I was very fond of Windows Vista, and to this day, I do sort of miss it, if only for its lovely visuals. While Vista did give me a lot of trouble in the start, after the first service pack, the system treated me really well. A controversial opinion, but imagine how boring this world would be if we all had the exact same opinion. Good night, everyone.

After Windows 7 I pretty much stopped using Windows. Went strictly to Linux for all my daily task. Couple things to bicker about with Linux but overall much better than any Windows OS as of recently. Every time I have to use windows on somebody else's device I get so ticked off by all the garbage that's on it. I have a Windows 7 and Windows 10 device that I use strictly for tuning cars. Every time I use Windows 10 I get so mad because of how slow it is on crummy hardware. (It's a cheap tablet) Also the UAC and non-stop updates has never stopped bothering the hell out of me. I always end up shutting them off and it's still pops up, makes me crazy.

I think the thing I miss the most about Windows 95-XP was the ability to replace the explorer shell. I used to run LiteStep on 98-XP, as well as a bunch of other 3rd party software (web browsers, file explorers, memory managers, etc) to try and not use as much of the Microsoft supplied software as possible. At one point, it almost felt like my Mandrake Linux install that I had on another machine.. lol. Too bad Microsoft eventually put a kebosh to that and all we have are 'interfaces' that sit on top of the windows explorer shell.

another great video chris, with some interesting omissions; {winders 3.0 & workgroup 3.12}. in the 1990s, 1 of my first "big" contract jobs was performing a company wide upgrade (7.5k units) from windows 3 to wfwg 3.12. had never done anything that large before, but I dug in, got deep and wrote the update. after a few test runs, I set the upgrade into the corporate login script and it was an amazing success with only 3 systems having an issue which was promptly resolved. this year I'm celebrating my 46th year in high tech having began in 1977 at the age of 15 on my old commodore PET. (somewhere) in my collection I still have my windows .9 [pre 1.0] disk tucked away in my office. 13 years ago, my father and I used to go toe to toe on my non stop criticism over microserf and their constant mistakes along they way. his argument was that even with their flaws they've given me quite a career while my argument was always, yeah but they could have done so much better.... lol. keep your greatness alive man. always love seeing your latest iteration across the industry......

I love vista. Although I was a child, but I remember the UI so well, and Win7 is my most favorite.

Why is red "excelent" and green "the absolute worst"?! That's somehow making me angry!

I've been running Linux on desktop since Win 10 came out, and I've not regretted it. I bought a new desktop PC with Win 11 on it and am dual-booting with Linux. I'm really liking Win11 for home use. Something about the user interface is so appealing. There are some features missing vs. Win 10 that I wonder if I'll enjoy it when we switch at work.

I appreciate that it’s not a super long video. I’ve seen some of these tier list videos drag on for over an hour.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Everyone putting XP on a pedestal didn't use it at launch. It started with the same bloat and bugs as any other release. People only consider it lightweight and stable because they were still using it after 2006.

Windows 8.1 was excellent, especially after 8.

having been in IT support since the 98 second era, I actually agree with your list, I never used 8 or 8.1 or had to deal with it though, 11 is average, I don't use it personally but its on my wifes laptop ME should really have just been a service pack for 98 2nd, its stable under certain conditions, and has some cool stuff in it as for XP I hated it until service pack 3, then it became fully usable, and I used it until 7 came along - definitely only the professional version, home version had way more issues

11 was great, S tier, it was the sole reason I started using Linux so I am very grateful for its existence now

You can't really blame XP for being a virus magnet -- it was a victim of its own popularity. It became super stable... remember we're actually comparing it to win95, not Windows NT or 2000. I can't believe you put XP below vista, that's crazy. XP SP2 was AMAZINGLY stable. SP3 just added better USB support, really. I'm still using win7 btw... last windows update was for SP1. :D All you need is SP1, and maybe a couple other updates you can just manually install for stuff like certificate authorities and stuff like that that you really absolutely need. I don't even run antivirus software -- I just don't install viruses or trojans. But steam is going to stop working on 7 soon, so new PC will have win10. I'm definitely going to replace the explorer shell with something like blackbox just like I did on win7, because explorer does unnecessary background crap you don't need it to do -- with blackbox I could set the process to idle priority and it still worked just fine as a windows manager. And using Explorer++ as a file manager, you could even get away with removing explorer.exe from your system completely -- I wouldn't do that... but I *could* and be fine.

Windows 2000 Pro was still the best.

Windows 8 was an unfortunate failure. If we ignore the Metro UI shenanigans they did, the OS was actually super responsive and actually kind of lightweight. It also brought many features that we are all used to now, such as the new Task Manager, File Explorer ribbon, SSD improvements, faster boot times and more. I would say Windows 8 was the lightest version of modern Windows since XP, despite its new and controversial UX.

Windows 7 was Microsoft's Abbey Road.

The first PC I purchased (for college) came with Windows ME preinstalled. After about a week of BSD and other issues I found Linux (Red Hat) and haven't looked back.

I also have very fond memories of Windows 2000 because it was my very first computer when I was young. I love the nostalgia that it provides and I thought it was a very good system. I just didn't like how it didn't have some built-in games that my Windows 95 system had. I feel like 95 also had a lot more screensaver options, at least on my system when I got that one. I kind of miss 2000 and would probably release intense euphoria if I got to mess around with my first system again. Unfortunately, it is dead now. I think the hard drive is dead, but I'm not entirely certain what happened as I was like 9 when that happened. I just remember installing Flash, my computer became unresponsive, and got stuck in a memory test loop forever (rebooted each time the 24000k or so counted down to 0 rather than saying Windows 2000 was starting).

My experience with Windows Me was so bad I ended up switching to Linux. Never looked back. Suffice to say that the first time I ever switched the notebook on I got a blue screen of death. Over the coming weeks it must have crashed at least 2 or 3 times a day, every day. I never felt so cheated out of my hard earned money.

Actually i would say Windows 8.1 with classic shell installed was the best OS what Microsoft ever made because the system requirements after 4 years were the same as windows 7 so it runs even faster than windows 7 and windows 10 on average computer, it was bringing new cool features like UEFI support, NVME support, Secure Boot support, USB 3.0 support, 3D printing support, new and fresh task manager and other cool stuffs... It was like a mix of windows 7 style and design and windows 10 version 1507 functionality. I would say windows 8.1 which designed to run on tablets and ultrabooks has hidden potential of performance and customization, let's be honest it's underrated a lot of people was just to scared of start menu screen and right sidebar which is very easy to hide by installing classic shell, also you can install uxStyle theme patcher and aero glass and make it look exactly like windows 7 and perform faster, also to get extra performance you just need to run services.msc and disable some unaccessary services and you can also take permision over windows store and onedrive and delete them and that's all you have a very clean and debloated and nice looking OS.

My old boss still uses his Vista laptop. I don't think he realises, or cares, but I have to hold back saying something. It's a very old school business in fairness.

Windows 11 would have been Great or Excellent Because MS is trying to rebuild a lot of the UI elements and the base dependencies however they shouldn't forced users to sign in with a microsoft account and those other weird artificial requirements. However, I like that you -kind of- normally distrusted them XD.

I can say that there are people still using windows 7 and companies that are not only still using windows 7 but even ms dos xD. Great tier list!

I'm pretty sure the reactOS team is aiming more towards NT5 compatibility now. I've tried it myself on both vm and real hardware, and not only does it work well enough for its purpose, but even some programs made for modern windows such as multimc work well.

This guy: Windows 95 moved things forward but had tons of compatibility issues, so I'll put it in the Bad tier. Also this guy: Vista broke a lot of things and had tons of compatibility issues, but for some reason, I'll put it in the Good tier. Guess who: Windows 10 belongs in the same tier as Vista. You're right about Win7 though, they let things go when they canceled the Service Pack model so SP1 was end of the road. With 8 coming they didn't want 7 to continue competing, which it did anyways so it ended up a mess like XP did as it dragged on and people avoided Vista.

You did NOT just put vista over xp

I had been using Windows 7 until 2019. It was so slow at the end. Then I switched to Linux and never looked back.

Windows Vista moved the kernel space drivers to userspace drivers. I think that was the single biggest and best move Microsoft has ever done (maybe outside of going from DOS to NT). XP used to bluescreen constantly, it never got better and would never get any better with kernel space drivers. Vista suffered horrible performance with the new paradigm, but once developers got more experience, Vista and subsequent Windows's became much much more stable.

I was ready to come with my pitchfork about XP, until I listened to your rationale. I was always good about knowing what I could and could not do, as well as how to clean up my system if it did get infected. It was great for me because I knew how to use it, especially after SP3. I can see why and agree with you about where you placed it on your list though.

Listening to you brings back memories of keeping the installation file of ME in a partition to be able to reinstall every time it crashed. TBH, Win 10 is about the best version of windows to date. I installed Win11 the day it came out. (remember the leaked Beta?) It has survived on two of my machines, but I continue to be underwhelmed. It is as if I hope that it will get better, but it seems to be going in the other direction. I've tested Win10 LTSC, and I may well use that until W11 either improves or dies a lingering death. (We will always have Linux) 😇

What happened to NT 4.0?

I liked your insight about Win XP. Everyone seems to have rose-colored glasses when it comes to XP, but in reality it was a nightmare. Everyone ran as admin as icing on the cake!

Been on Windows since 98 and pretty much agree with your assessment, although I loved my win7 - now on win 11... it's tolerable with a lot of unnecessary changes to the UI which is a pain. Any rumors on when we can expect Win-12?

7>xp>2000>vista>10>8(.1)>11

I fully agree with you on Win2k... This one was the best... Very stable, low ressources usage... I would love to see an OS like this today... Even XFCE on Linux is not so "clean" and "light" but stable and reliable...

Fun list and I mostly agree. I missed the pure 32 bit NT ranked. I used NT4 personally and professionally and loved it back then. The drawback was max DirectX 3 support but a few good games worked. 2000 that replaced NT4 was equally good with the full DX support but felt more sluggish at the time.

My first computer came with Windows 98SE, and I remember being one excited 13 year old upgrading to Windows 2000 Professional. Closest I could get to Windows XP as my PC was not compatible with XP . Really enjoyed both OSs. Xp is still my favorite of all time, this far

XP was extremely weak to viruses. I've had installs that were severely infected before the setup ended. Vista started off really rough but by the time SP2 came out it was basically Windows 7. I managed to snag a copy of Vista Ultimate for $50 back in the day, that turned out to be $50 well spent by the time SP2 came out.

The "average" tier should really be titled "eh", and "good" should be titled "fine"

Normally I don’t comment but this time around I will make an Exception. 1) WindowsME was more of an update type for Win98. Any Joe would consider that as an average OS. 2) Windows Vista, Windows 8 and even Win8.1 which was more of an update to fix all the issues from previous version win8. These versions were total complete garbage. Chris you don’t know what you are talking about as you graded these while under influence of alcohol. 3) Windows XP was great! We used it for a very long time.

I dont care the hate I might get for it but Vista was my favorite OS. I went out and built a new gaming rig and bought the Ultimate edition of it and had almost no problems ever from it.

Glad to see Win 2000 up there.

I totally agree with you about Vista. I used Vista and loved it. I hated XP. Virus Magnet. Super easy to bypass most microsoft security processes.

As someone born in the mid 2000s, 7 was the first Windows version I ever used and it was good, but I was younger then and didn't really know nor remember that much. Windows 10 is the OS I would say I've grown up on. My knowledge and interest in technology and computers started to grow after 10 released and it'll probably be the one I look back on most fondly despite what people think about it. I don't mind 11, my only real gripe is the start menu since I grew up on 10, and that's the style of start menu I'm the most familiar with.

He’s right…in that people will say he’s wrong about XP. :-) He’s the first “professional” I’ve really heard say XP was just avg and that Vista was slightly better. Many of my friends are long time computer geeks and quite a lot of them still miss XP and very few ever had any kind of disdain for it (except the Mac users). I will definitely say Vista 64-bit was better than XP 64-bit, though. :-) it took me a long time to accept 7 after XP, but I eventually got used to it. I still haven’t gotten used to 10, though 11 makes 10 almost dreamy. And 2000 FTW, definitely! For 10+, could Microsoft AT LEAST give us a real XP Classic Mode UI??? I might hate them less. 3rd party tweaks haven’t been that fulfilling.

I'd say ... Thanks Microsoft. For releasing Windows 11. Because of it, now I've found the joy of using Linux Mint. Without it, I would never know the Linux World and 2023 technology is so awesome. So, thanks.

I started about the same timeframe as you (around the Win 3.11 / Win95 era) and my general experience has been every other release has been great. I don't know if that means Microsoft doesn't give their engineers enough time to develop properly or whether it takes a full release to get enough user feedback. I rocked Win2K for many years and then Win7 as preferred versions but I must say that Win10 Pro with WSL is a nice touch though you need to debloat Win10. The jury is still out on 11

I used 98, XP, 8/8.1, and 10. After Microsoft released Windows 11 though, (I had experience with Linux by this point) I dived headlong into Linux (Xubuntu 22.04.2 LTS to be exact) and applied a 1990s theme and a background. I can game and do everything I need to. I will NEVER leave Linux. Windows is dead to me and I'm never touching it again.

That was really interesting insight on Windows 7. I was an avid Vista user. I was using it on hardware it was designed for and it was fast and it remains the only Windows version I've used as my main OS that never gave me a blue screen. When I jumped ship to 7 when Vista lost support, I noticed that it was bogging down abnormally quick, it had memory management issues and overall got more buggy the longer I used it. I never had an explanation for this, especially since I never experienced this with Vista. We had a Vista machine that ran for 10 years and it was as fast at the time it was retired as it was when it was new, which was madly impressive to me.

Where is WIndows for workstations? NT? CE? Server versions?

It's a very intersting video with an interesting point of vue. I switched from Mac to Windows around the XP / Vista period, mainly because of gaming, but also because of apple pissing me off quite a bit. And as such, putting XP on a low tier and Vista so high is really surprising to me. But it does make sense from the perspective of an IT oriented point of vue. Thank you for that video, it was very instructive !

Which bios chip from a manufacturer have you have encountered the least problems with? ty for the video...btw, loved w2k. peace.

I remember when Windows 8 came out all of my friends approached me left and right to downgrade their new computers to Windows 7. Nobody liked it at all.

I haven't really used the earlier versions of Windows, but my ranking of what I have used would be: 1. Windows 7 2. Windows XP 3. Windows 11 4. Windows 10 5. Windows 8 While I respect your opinion, the deal with Windows XP was that it was the first home user release not based on MSDOS, using the new NT base instead, while being quite lightweight. Thus it was kept simple and stable. This is more personal, but the visuals and audio are also just iconic

98 was my family's 1st computer and it was good for habbo hotel. I don't remember much of it other than that. XP for me only holds nostalgic value, especially with the olive theme. But really that's about it. I remember it fondly but today it's just a toy that I may open as a virtual machine. Nostalgia aside, it's "average" for me. I don't miss it really. Vista was pretty exciting to me and probably has my favorite aesthetic. I like the glass look, the shiny buttons, the blur in windows, and the underwater-y godray look with shiny wavy lines on blue-green-yellow colors, and it was pretty cool to see 1 of the screensaver have transparent bubbles bouncing around (not very impressive today but I like bubbles and having transparent stuff was amazing). I didn't have any issues with it other than being a bit slow (mostly because I wasn't too tech savvy yet when it came down to specs and money) but turning off windows effects sped it up pretty nicely. Widgets I just threw out of the way. It's "Good" for me. I do miss the feeling it gave me but not the OS. Win 7 was a little better than vista, which made it feel less amazing. It gave me a feeling of "ok so now I'm using the more accepted version of Windows" mostly. It ran better, but I bet it was mostly due to being on a newer laptop. It became the baseline in my head what Windows OS is supposed to be. I'm actually going to put win8.1 in a good or potentially even great category. I didn't have the "UGH what is this crap" mindset on the get-go and gave it a fair chance when it still was just 8, so in 1-2 days or so when I got used to it, it was quite nice, and when 8.1 update came it was even better. I was told later that the start menu was made like so for tablet reasons but I didn't really internalize that information fully until very late. It was just an odd different start menu which I accepted. I knew that there was classic shell as an option if I didn't like the start menu but I didn't mind. Windows 10 was the 1st time I had a PC instead of a laptop which made it pretty special, especially since I built it myself. Going back to the Windows 7 UI with a hint of 8.1 was pretty neat. After 10 years of using it, the only issue I was bummed about was that since I've always been a Bluetooth headphone, the 1803 update fucked up the user experience that you could only fix by changing the "disableabsolutevolume" registry value. I got used to the new ways later but how everything started with that Bluetooth feature was buggy and controlled the audio in ways that just did not work or changed the volume for you to break your eardrums. No issues anymore but changing the volume for your headphones and computer separately had its use (I use Linux now mostly and I can have the best of both worlds and then some). This version has the most complaints I've heard from my friends. Haven't tried 11 a whole lot. I really don't prefer any version over the other when it comes down to versions between XP to 10 as long they are up to the standards of today with security and compatibility, since I don't think there have been any necessary user features since even before XP maybe. Debloated windows 10 would probably be my pick.

For an Average Joe that wants an OS debloated for Office Work an gaming which one would you recommend right now? Thanks, nice vid!

I can't agree more on the Windows 2000. I used it for a LOT of years, even when ME/vista came out. Reason was very simple; It was a solid OS, never crashed, was simple to use, and could run about just anything. If i would love to get a windows version back to today's standards, it would be Windows 2000 Professional!

Nice to see you speak truth about XP. No amount of rose tint can make me forget about the absolutely obnoxious Messenger Service pop-up spam.

When Win2k came out, I was managing a project upgrading all the PCs in the estate from NT to 2000. We've built the images to install, tested all the software in our domain and test users were happy with it. All of a sudden company taken over and parent company went with XP. All the efforts down the drain. I was furious and for that I never used XP at home.

As an IT guy, windows XP was a great OS - outside of all the vulnerabilities. Ironically, at the time, a test came out that showed how Apple OS (Jaguar?) was the most vulnerable by far. Windows 2000 was beautiful, I was so proud to be using Windows NTs successor lmao. Vista and Millennium were the worst by far, 98 UE1 then Win8 and Win 95, then Win7 and 98SE, then win XP, then Win 10 and Win 11 and the king was win 2k

I totally disagree with putting XP in bad, and windows 2000 in excellent. Windows 2000 is average at best, and XP is GOD TIER!

There's one thing I like about windoze 11. They put all of the system tools together in one place. Other than that, I think you give it too much credit.

I'm still using WIn7 SP3 with updates disabled since 2014 as my laptop daily driver. Having omitted that post-2014 rash of NSA "security patches" aka back doors (you tactfully call it "telemetry"), it runs rock solid, sometimes for up to a year at a time between reboots. Note my laptop is 2010 era (very few original parts) and I love it simply because the model is £100 on eBay (I have many in various stages of decomposition / cannibalization), with the later CPUs it can be maxed to 16GB (spec says 8GB) and with a decent SSD it flies. Throw Ubuntu on one and it screams along :) The only innovations of significance since have been battery capacity, screen resolution and weight - none are issues for me because I have an identical laptop and every location.

Great! I'm looking forward to a Linux tier of the ones you have used

I still use Windows 7 as my daily driver. I stopped doing updates when Microsoft started pushing out the telemetry crap. I was running Security Essentials for many years, and then switched to Malwarebytes about 5 years ago. Never had a problem with malware.

A Vista upgrade literally bricked my computer. Putting Vista anywhere above XP is absolute blasphemy

Totally agree with you on Windows 2K. Excellent history summary. New information on older Window version that either were not known, or forgotten about. Thanks Chris.

Speaking of Windows 10 and debloating... It would be really nice if you could update your Windows Edge removal guide since it's not working anymore. Thanks in advance!

Does anybody know what the last telemetry-free version of Windows 7 was, and/or how to find it? I would like to keep an ISO of it for posterity and good luck

It seems like we grew up at the same time. I share a lot of the experiences that you stated in this. XP was great, but now that i look back at it, i spent so much time making it work and tweaking it to be great, that yeah, it wasn't that great by itself.

Windows XP is not a bad product, but it became so famous it was a target for pirates and all. Windows 2000 was also targeted (by Blaster, Sasser, Bagle, etc.), I don't understand why you mix the OS quality with how it's been targeted among the years.

I agree with the list. I never got a BSOD with Windows 2000 and I always BSOD on Windows Me even after running it the first time after a fresh installation.

I think you got XP wrong - for one simple reason. That time was the Internet Boom. XP was just there to support it. I suppose any other Windows released during that time would be the same - we just had to learn the new ways. XP was plainly "improved Win2k for masses".