Windows 11 Less Popular than Windows XP: Survey

[Grimlakin]

I used it as well, for work as a workstation, and the only problem I had with it is that it would take an insane amount of time to load. So much in fact that we'd just leave the workstations running overnight so we didn't have to wait for them to load the next day.

But for home, I've had several games that either didn't start on it at all, or had various issues. Like I specifically remember Intersate 76's sound sticking into an infinite loop on it, which was my favorite game at the time so it instantly ruled out 2K as an OS for me. There was also no driver available for my tv-tuner card at the time.

Man I want to see a retuned version of Interstate 76 for modern systems. (And it would be retuned not remastered... because it's a car game.)

 

[Brian_B]

I didn't have big problems with Win2k - it had some early driver issues, but it was sorted out, more or less.

I had the most issues with WinXPx64, which wasn't really Windows XP - it was Server '03 with the XP front end. It had a lot more issues than Win2k did with games and driver compatibility.

 

[Brian_B]

Man I want to see a retuned version of Interstate 76 for modern systems. (And it would be retuned not remastered... because it's a car game.)

I can't upvote this one enough. i76 was ~awesome~ in the day.

 

[Burticus]

I am going to ride Win 10 into the dirt. Not that it's great... I like 7 better. But the alternatives are 11 or Linux... so I'll stay put.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I ditched Windows ME for Windows 2k Pro and never looked back. Never knew Windows ME ran the same hardware better in games than Windows 2k Pro did as I never compared them, but the games I played (Unreal Tournament) ran exceptionally well for me to where I was able to be very competitive. (Top 3 consistently and usually #1)

I liked 2k Pro so much that I didn't switch to Windows XP until late, late 2005 and even then I only had it on my laptop at the time. It wasn't until late into 2006 that I started running XP on my desktop. I stayed with Windows XP until Windows 7 was 1 or 2 years old.

 

[Dan_D]

I ditched Windows ME for Windows 2k Pro and never looked back. Never knew Windows ME ran the same hardware better in games than Windows 2k Pro did as I never compared them, but the games I played (Unreal Tournament) ran exceptionally well for me to where I was able to be very competitive. (Top 3 consistently and usually #1)

I liked 2k Pro so much that I didn't switch to Windows XP until late, late 2005 and even then I only had it on my laptop at the time. It wasn't until late into 2006 that I started running XP on my desktop. I stayed with Windows XP until Windows 7 was 1 or 2 years old.

I wish I could remember which games worked better on which OS. I vaguely recall Quake engine based games running worse. Unreal Engine probably ran fine because it always did run about the same on anything. Graphics API had a lot more to do with it than anything where that game was concerned. Quake engine based games were super common back in the day which would have been a problem.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I wish I could remember which games worked better on which OS. I vaguely recall Quake engine based games running worse. Unreal Engine probably ran fine because it always did run about the same on anything. Graphics API had a lot more to do with it than anything where that game was concerned. Quake engine based games were super common back in the day which would have been a problem.

Would make sense. I never really played any Quake based games from what I can remember. Mostly Unreal Tournament, Serious Sam, Counter Strike, Command & Conquer, Star Craft, to name a few of the games I played most often.

 

[MadMummy76]

I wish I could remember which games worked better on which OS. I vaguely recall Quake engine based games running worse. Unreal Engine probably ran fine because it always did run about the same on anything. Graphics API had a lot more to do with it than anything where that game was concerned. Quake engine based games were super common back in the day which would have been a problem.

I think I can vaguely remember UT running well on 2K, or even better than on 9X/ME.

 

[Zarathustra]

I mean, Windows 11 doesn't really do anything of significance that Windows 10 doesn't.

That being the case, if you have Windows 10 and it is working for you, and you can't upgrade without buying a new computer, why would you?

 

[Burticus]

I wish I could remember which games worked better on which OS. I vaguely recall Quake engine based games running worse. Unreal Engine probably ran fine because it always did run about the same on anything. Graphics API had a lot more to do with it than anything where that game was concerned. Quake engine based games were super common back in the day which would have been a problem.

the 3dfx / glide drivers for win 2000 were not great, and then Nvidia bought them out in 2001.... I don't think there was huge incentive to ever fix the drivers. By the time XP was the norm, my 3dfx card was long gone.

 

[MadMummy76]

the 3dfx / glide drivers for win 2000 were not great, and then Nvidia bought them out in 2001.... I don't think there was huge incentive to ever fix the drivers. By the time XP was the norm, my 3dfx card was long gone.

Glide never worked properly under anything newer than 9x. And I don't think the XP drivers for my voodoo even supported D3D, only GLide and Opengl.

 

[Zarathustra]

With Red, the ones that I never adopted as a primary OS

Windows 95 - It was horrible, but it was this shiny new thing, so we had to try it

Worked fine for me, but I didn't run any games under it. I still did that from DOS,

Windows 95 OSR2 - Much more stable, actually usable, but still even mild hardware changes necessitated a full reinstall

I remember it being mostly the same. Kinks worked out, a bit more stable, but other than that, mostly the same.

Windows 98 - This one really worked well for me, so I kept it as my primary OS until XP

I never really used the first release of Win98

Windows 98 SE - I had all kinds of issues with this, never could get it working properly.

For me Win 98 SE was perfect. So perfect - in fact - that I kept it around way longer than most. For a while I was actually dual booting Windows 2000 (for work and stuff) and Win98SE for games.

Windows 2000 - Game and hardware compatibility issues killed any chance it had

Windows 2000 was essentially an NT branch. It was rock solid and stable, and thus perfect for work, but not great for games. You didn't exactly game on NT4 either...

Windows ME - I didn't hate it as much as everyone , it wasn't worse than 98 for me but the bloatware was strong with it, so I never adopted it

I hate it. I never understood how it ever made it to gold. We are talking multiple bluescreens daily. I only had it installed for about a week, before reverting to Win98SE. What a **** show.

Windows XP - Iinitally it had the same issues as 2000, but eventually after the first or second service pack it got good.

By the time XP came out I was running Linux as my main desktop. I essentally replaced my Win2000 ddual boot with one flavor of Linux or another (Started with Red Hat, then landed on Gentoo for several years) I kept Win98SE for games for quite some time before eventually moving to XP. I want to say I recall thinking mouse movements felt off in XP compared to Win98SE, and Counter-Strike just felt WRONG in XP, at least at first. At some point I upgraded to XP but I can't remember when. It was probably after the first couple of service packs. By then it was pretty good. Protected memory addressing was a HUGE leap forward and resulted in bluescreens becoming a fraction of the issue they once were.

Windows Vista - The sloth of windows, you really needed 2GB of ram for this at a minimum, but it came out when many PCs were still 512MB

Because I was still running Linux as my daily (I had moved to Ubuntu by the time Vista came along) I just kept XP as my dual boot for games. I had no need to move to Vista. Crossover Office under Linux worked great for office apps. I finally bought a copy of Vista x64 Business edition a few weeks before Windows 7 came out.

There was something I needed it for that wouldn't work well in XP. It came with a free upgrade to Windows 7 upon launch, so I figured why not. I installed Vista. (Briefly triple booting in case I was unhappy with it, as I had heard how everyone hated Vista) I remember thinking that it felt a little heavier and slower than XP had, but also felt smoother. Like a big ship less perturbed by the waves. I also remember thinking that it was nowhere near as bad as I had been led to believe.

Granted, I got it late in the game when most of the driver issues had been resolved.

I - for one - liked UAC. I thought it was finally some good user account management in Windows, like I was used to under Linux. It was a little bit of a pain for legacy games/programs that were not UAC aware, but well worth it for the added security.

Windows 7 - I had some reservations about the UAC, and some UI changes, but eventually got used to them.

Windows 7 was pretty much exactly the same as Vista, but they fine tuned UAC a little (making it nag you less) and reshened the UI a bit. I installed it under the free upgrade program a few weeks after iunstalling Vista, and was reasonably happy with it.

Windows 8 - this left me dumbfounded, when I first encountered it on a prebuilt, I couldn't find the most basic things in it, I felt the same way as I did when I saw a PC for the first time and knew nothing about DOS, I had to refer to outside help to get anything done.

I kept Windows 7 on my desktop for games (as a secondary OS to Linux) but I did buy a copy of Windows 8 for my HTPC. I wanted to try the new tile interface to see if it made for a good HTPC experience. While I wouldn't ahve wanted it anywhere near my desktop, I thought it was reasonably OK in the HTPC role.

I eventually moved the HTPC to Kodi though, and later reused the license for a desktop after the free Windows 10 upgrade program.

Windows 8.1 - Too little too late.

Never really used this one much.

Windows 10 - I didn't like it, but I had to go along with it, and for the record I still don't like it, and it gets worse with every feature update, eroding user oversight and control panel features.

I hated it. I mean, under thehood it was the best OS Microsoft had ever released. Kernel optimizations, RAM use, install footprint, you name it. In all of these areas Windows 10 improved over Windows 7. I just hated what Microsoft did on top of it.

Everything from the **** they pulled to compel people to upgrade (clicking the red X installs now?)

All the preinstalled tablet shovelware that can't be removed. Even if you succeed it's still there in the background and magically reappears the next time you create a user account.

Online cloud user accounts instead of local accounts, telemetry, Microsoft store, using your PC to host Windows updates, cloud integration, Cortana, the new flat settings menus, you name it. I hate it all. With Windows 10 Microsoft was essentially mimicking everything I hated about Android/iOS.

I put off installing Windows 10 for quite a bit after launch, but eventually caved.

I've gotten used to it to the point where I no longer enter a blind fit of rage every time I use it, but that doesn't mean I like it.

I want to get back to basics, where an OS is just an OS. No preinstalled programs or functionality. You install everything yourself that you want. I don't want anything that ties the achine to an online account, no automation, unless I intentionally created the automation, etc. etc.

Windows 11 - The windows after the last version of windows, I don't know why this even exists, it's terrible at best, broken at worst.

Same. This move made no sense to me.

 

[Zarathustra]

I used it as well, for work as a workstation, and the only problem I had with it is that it would take an insane amount of time to load. So much in fact that we'd just leave the workstations running overnight so we didn't have to wait for them to load the next day.

But for home, I've had several games that either didn't start on it at all, or had various issues. Like I specifically remember Intersate 76's sound sticking into an infinite loop on it, which was my favorite game at the time so it instantly ruled out 2K as an OS for me. There was also no driver available for my tv-tuner card at the time.

Yeah, I remember mouse response being weird in Counter-Strike. I forget the details. Maybe you couldn't disable acceleration, or something like that. In the end, it was a great OS for its time, very stable for productivity stuff, I just couldn't make myself run games in it.

 

[Ranulfo]

I had very few problems with win2k and ran it for probably 3 or so years on a Duron 1ghz and then an AthlonXP. Gaming wise a lack of problems might have been because I wasn't playing many old games at that point. I only upgraded to XP because I had a maxtor hd die on me for the second time so I bought my first sata hd and did a fresh install of FisherPrice OS er XP. Which I then used on two machines from 2004 to 2010 when I went to win7. Which I then used as a daily driver and gaming OS for 10 years.

I despised window8's tile system and 10 isn't much better for all the reasons mentioned by others.

 

[Brian_B]

Hmm... Makes me think

How many different factors would you rate an OS? I can think of a few off the top of my head. In no particular order:

Stability: Taking this distinctly from hardware stability - but how well does the OS resist/mitigate crashing and/or data degradation? Can it stand up to errant programs and fail gracefully? Does it have adequate logging and tools to be able to identify and repair issues?

UI: How easy is the UI to use. How consistent is it throughout the user experience. Does the UI help facilitate commonly performed tasks and workflows?

Security: You could almost sub-divide this into local security and online/remote security if you wanted to. How resistant is the OS to unwanted intrusion, to viruses and malware, to data theft, etc. I would note that Obscurity is not a valid security method to be evaluated here.

Efficiency: A metric relating to how well the OS runs on various levels/powers of hardware. How much RAM does it require to run or to run well? Disk space footprint? Does the OS and it's various APIs help or hinder various software benchmarks for a given hardware suite?

Miscellaneous Tools: Things apart from just what are needed to bootstrap the OS and run third party programs. This would be items such as Media Players, Anti-Virus, Web Browsers, Data Backup, Productivity software, etc - anything bundled with the OS (these can be pros or cons)

Third Party Support: An OS doesn't do much good without stuff to do with it. How well do third party developers support the platform. This is heavily influenced by availability and easy of use of the various APIs offered by the OS.

Cost and Availability: Free is better than not free, but not the only consideration here. Some OSes may contain export restrictions, not support language regions, or other factors that can limit their availability.

Updates: Is the OS well supported by the maker? Security, performance improvements, and bug fixes all count here. Are issues addressed in a timely manner? Are patches well communicated and documented?

Documentation: Can you find training materials, FAQs, user support forums and venues, How-Tos, and other various methods of learning how to accomplish things with and inside the OS. I would extend this to both officially supported by the vendor as well as third party and/or community supported.


---------------

Of all of these, I think over the years Windows really only wins on Third Party Support over various OSes I've used, but I would have to admit that's a pretty important once. And even the various versions of Windows, they seem to be able to make progress in one area only to regress in others; Microsoft seems to have a really hard time advancing all the fields at once -- or at the very least keeping what is good while improving other things.

I thought about adding in Open Source support - for some that's a big deal, for others not so much, so I don't think it can be a valid objective metric. Same thing goes with hardware platform support - some people care if they can run the same OS on any given platform, others don't really care if it's locked down or only supports specific platforms.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I think one of the biggest factors you are leaving out @Brian_B is how much control does the USER have over the operating system?

 

[Burticus]

95 OSR2, aka Win 95 rev A (or was it B?) , was mostly the same but with minor bug fixes and improvements. The biggest was FAT32 which was a huge deal at the time. Allowed for larger disks to use smaller block sizes, resulting in more disk space if you just had tons of small files. This was a huge deal for me at the time, since we lived in the GB years.... a 1GB drive suddenly could free up a ton of space bc of smaller files.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I remember my first hard drive being 20GB in size (I know, its exponentially larger than most all of your first hard drives) and the sales guy I was talking to when I was making the purchase told me "You will never fill this drive up." when I inquired about 20GB being big enough. 1 month later, I discovered mIRC and by the end of the year I had a blazing fast DSL connection with a blistering 1.54Mbps download.


Needless to say, I bought a 40GB drive not long after due to my 20GB drive being... full.

 

[Dan_D]

Windows 95 - It was revolutionary at the time. It wasn't perfect, but it was decent for the day.
Windows 95 OSR2 - More stable and worked properly with USB devices.
Windows 98 - Windows 98 was a good one for me.
Windows 98 SE - Most people will tell you that Windows 98SE was better than Windows 98. I wouldn't. I called it the "**** Edition" because it never worked right for me. I tried it on a number of hardware configurations and it never worked properly.
Windows 2000 - Not worth a **** for games. As others mentioned, it didn't work with Glide and I recall Q3 engine based games not working worth a **** on it.
Windows ME - Oddly, Windows ME worked fine for me. It was super fast at the time. I was a computer technician back when this launched and I learned that it only worked on the most mainstream hardware and higher end configurations. If you had a 5 year old Packard Bell, this wasn't the OS for you.
Windows XP - Initial teething problems but after the first service pack it was a great OS. By the time Vista came out, I was happy to see it go as it was getting difficult to install without creating custom installs for it. It supported nothing out of the box by the time it was supplanted.
Windows XP/x64 Edition - I got this for free from AMD at a press event when the Athlon 64 launched. This was my go to OS until Windows Vista came out.
Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition - I used this on my dual Opteron 254 system. It was surprisingly easy to make software designed for Windows XP to work with it.
Windows Vista - This one got a bad reputation it didn't deserve. Everyone thought it was terribly inefficient because they still can't wrap their heads around Windows doing automatic tasks in the background with unused resources.
Windows 7 - I hated UAC, but otherwise this is the pinnacle of Windows for me. The interface, speed and general experience was superior to all previous versions and certainly anything that came later.
Windows 8 - Hot garbage. This OS has the worst desktop interface Microsoft has ever come up with. It's basically Microsoft BOB, but it was actually released to the public.
Windows 8.1 - This is akin to polishing a turd. At least it sort of had a start menu. Kind of.
Windows 10 - After the **** show that was Windows 8.x, 10 was a step in the right direction. It's interface is no Windows 7 and Microsoft kept making it worse and re-arranging menus in a way that never made sense to me.
Windows 11 - I ****ing hate it. I wouldn't run it if my machine didn't have a Core i9 12900K in it.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I haven't used all of these but did 98, XP, Vistas, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. I may've briefly tried 95 but that was right around the time I dropped out of the scene for a bit. However, I completely agree with @Dan_D.