Worst verison of Windows?

Worst verison of Windows yet?

  • Total voters
    28
I believe Vista's actually quite underrated. It didnt help that a lot of the computers it runned on barely met the minimum specifications.

I am not saying anything about Windows 8 because I dont know too much about it really.

I once used Windows ME on one of my test machines. It was painful. As far as I remember there was hardly any compatibility with anything and it tended to crash a bit.
I later put Linux on it and sold it for $50. Not bad considering I had gotten it for $5 at a yard sale.
So I will vote ME.
 
I'm surprised you haven't given up, Zelig.
 
Tommy Vercetti said:
The basic user interface on Windows 8 is just annoying. Windows 7 is easier to use and to navigate.
Click to expand...

See Zack's post.

cardgame said:
I'm surprised you haven't given up, Zelig.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to help people. Mac OS is my primary OS, so I've got no ulterior motive here.

Over Christmas, I upgraded my non-tech-savvy mother, father and sister to Windows 8, none of them have any problems.

At my day job I work at software development company, we've upgraded all of our computers to Windows 8, everyone here is overall happy with it. (Including some very good UI designers.)
 
It's received generally stellar reviews, even from more gaming-inclined sites like Tom's Hardware and more Apple-inclined sites like The Verge.

CNET: 8.0 / 10 -- Excellent -- "Microsoft makes an aggressive, forward-thinking, and bold statement for the future of PCs with Windows 8, and vast security and speed improvements more than justify the $40 upgrade price."

Tom's Hardware: "I have no trouble admitting that I started this story very bearish on Windows 8. But as I went, exploring each of the operating system's features, I grew to like it more and more. For all of the reasons covered in the preceding 13 500 words, we're giving Windows 8 Tom's Hardware Recommended Buy award." -- Although a missing Start menu is scaring off many power users, the fact is that Windows 8 does everything Windows 7 does, plus some. If you want a familiar Windows experience on your desktop, Windows 8 makes that possible.

The Verge: 8.8 / 10 -- "Windows 8 is a beautiful operating system and one that feels incredibly personal once it’s customized."
 
Zack said:
It's received generally stellar reviews, even from more gaming-inclined sites like Tom's Hardware and more Apple-inclined sites like The Verge.

CNET: 8.0 / 10 -- Excellent -- "Microsoft makes an aggressive, forward-thinking, and bold statement for the future of PCs with Windows 8, and vast security and speed improvements more than justify the $40 upgrade price."

Tom's Hardware: "I have no trouble admitting that I started this story very bearish on Windows 8. But as I went, exploring each of the operating system's features, I grew to like it more and more. For all of the reasons covered in the preceding 13 500 words, we're giving Windows 8 Tom's Hardware Recommended Buy award." -- Although a missing Start menu is scaring off many power users, the fact is that Windows 8 does everything Windows 7 does, plus some. If you want a familiar Windows experience on your desktop, Windows 8 makes that possible.

The Verge: 8.8 / 10 -- "Windows 8 is a beautiful operating system and one that feels incredibly personal once it’s customized."
Click to expand...


Those are the exceptions. Most normal people hate it. Some people defended Vista too and it failed. I HATE change. Death to Windows 8 and the Metro UI.
 
Zack said:
Do you need a dictionary definition of "specific"? And saying "it just sucks and is fail, man" is not valid reasoning.
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It's always easier to decide if you like an interface than to identify why. The inability of a non expert to articulate why they don't like an interface does not mean that they are wrong in their taste. It's the nature of UI design, which is quite different from other factors like absolute speed and responsiveness.
 
I haven't used Windows 8 so can't really comment on that, but when I think back to Windows 3.11 and earlier and the number of general protection faults I would experience in a day, none of the versions since then were as bad as that. To me, Win 7 is the best so far, with my experience of Win ME being the best prior to that. Believe it or not my ME install was the most stable I had up until Win7. I must have been lucky.
 
Tommy Vercetti said:
Those are the exceptions. Most normal people hate it. Some people defended Vista too and it failed. I HATE change. Death to Windows 8 and the Metro UI.
Click to expand...

My completely non-tech-savvy mother, father, and sister all like it.

Pretty much the only people who don't like it are people who haven't used it.

Souron said:
It's always easier to decide if you like an interface than to identify why. The inability of a non expert to articulate why they don't like an interface does not mean that they are wrong in their taste. It's the nature of UI design, which is quite different from other factors like absolute speed and responsiveness.
Click to expand...

Right, but Windows 8 equals or bests Windows 7 in pretty much every objective measure, which is why I generally don't bother defending the UI design.
 
Windows 3.11 for workgroups has been my most-hated version. I ran a little group of networked computers, and it crashed regularly. The steps that would eventually bring the network back up would be the same steps I had tried earlier.

I haven't used 8, though I do not expect to like it. This is because we'll switch to it at work, where I will have limited rights to set it up as I like. I don't anticipate buying a new computer at home before a new version comes out.

At work, we moved from XP to 7, though I had Vista for a little while, before IT discovered they'd accidentally forgotten to wipe Vista before giving me my laptops. 7 is not so bad when you have administrative rights, but it stinks when you don't. For example, nearly every day, it asks me to upgrade software to a different version and then (if I agree to) tells me I can't. I liked Vista better, primarily because I could disable internet access for particular users without disabling it for everyone. There is no obvious way to do this in 7.

Generally, I've had no major problems with anything except 3.11. I don't like any of them aesthetically; GUI is for the birds, but I'm too lazy to switch to anything else.

@Zelig: For most users, Windows is _only_ the user interface. Only a tiny fraction of people care about anything else.
 
Why does this thread make become another argument about Windows 8? Is there not already a thread for that?
 
7 is not so bad when you have administrative rights, but it stinks when you don't.
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It's still a pain in the ass when you do. I don't know why I have to hit "yes" every time I run certain programs or install something, it drives me crazy.
 
I'm not sure what that means how answering it would break the rules.

Also I sort of find the poll kind of narrow as there are only three actual concrete choices. I mean what if I wanted to say Windows 98 was the worst? (I'm joking, of course. By the way, is the 98SE any big difference from 98 Vanilla? It has been years so I don't remember, except I think better USB support)
 
Zack said:
It's still a pain in the ass when you do. I don't know why I have to hit "yes" every time I run certain programs or install something, it drives me crazy.
Click to expand...

1. It's much improved over the state of affairs when Vista first came out, developers have cleaned up their act since then with respect to admin requirements for apps. If you still have programs that toggle a UAC prompt every time they run, those programs probably suck.

2. You can disable UAC if you like.

3. In regular system operation UAC prompts should be pretty rare, basically only when you install programs, which maybe once every couple weeks on average. The idea being that when you see a UAC prompt in some other situation, there's a good chance there's something going on which shouldn't be happening.

4. Really, Windows is still the easiest OS in this regard with default settings, Mac OS makes you type in your account password for any security prompt through the GUI, Linux makes you sudo and then input your password.
 
The UAC prompt hardly bothers me except when sometimes I am doing system admin tasks with some programs and playing music and when the UAC comes up the music stops and it is very jarring.

Also for the record showing my mother how to turn off the UAC (she would not stop bothering me about it) turned out to be a bad idea because her computer seems to be infested with viruses every month. This is probably more or less due to her stupid computer habits though. The UAC thing probably doesn't help.

At least once I can count UAC saving my hide. I was browsing innocently and went on a site which had turned out to be compromised (it's better now) when suddenly the UAC popped up so I did not let it launch. Didn't know what it was but probably something bad.
 
Zelig said:
Right, but Windows 8 equals or bests Windows 7 in pretty much every objective measure, which is why I generally don't bother defending the UI design.
Click to expand...
UI design may be hard to get quantifiable measures on, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a big deal. It can justifiably make or break a product.
 
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