A few things that people seem to have forgotten over the years:
The “Fisher-Price” visual style fiasco. (People claiming XP’s UI design choices were too unprofessional)
Extremely unstable on base release, with things only getting better after Service Pack 1.
Activation servers required to install the OS.
The start of Window’s Customer Experience Improvement Program telemetry.
Integration of Windows Update into the OS, which re-enabled Microsoft defaults like Internet Explorer, after patches were complete.
The start of confusing SKUs: Home Edition, Professional Edition, Media Center Edition, and Professional x64 Edition which was confusingly a re-badged Server 2003.
I’m sure I am forgetting a lot more. It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies like people seem to remember… but it was a lot better than now.
You got these right, and I wrote basically similar things.
But I had to reply because if you remember all of this, you might also remember seeing how long an XP machine could last on the internet before being patched enough.
It was crazy that you HAD to upgrade it offline, because it would be owned before you could even get it patched. At the time we saw 10 to 15 minutes tops before it was infected.
In any case, yes, XP was the start of all the things we hate today. Its interesting how much more push back there was back then: anti consumer advocates, government intervention, class action lawsuits, even the EU got their own version because they got involved.
Now everything is even worse, and only the consumers seem to be the ones complaining.
A few things that people seem to have forgotten over the years:
The “Fisher-Price” visual style fiasco. (People claiming XP’s UI design choices were too unprofessional)
Extremely unstable on base release, with things only getting better after Service Pack 1.
Activation servers required to install the OS.
The start of Window’s Customer Experience Improvement Program telemetry.
Integration of Windows Update into the OS, which re-enabled Microsoft defaults like Internet Explorer, after patches were complete.
The start of confusing SKUs: Home Edition, Professional Edition, Media Center Edition, and Professional x64 Edition which was confusingly a re-badged Server 2003.
I’m sure I am forgetting a lot more. It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies like people seem to remember… but it was a lot better than now.
You got these right, and I wrote basically similar things.
But I had to reply because if you remember all of this, you might also remember seeing how long an XP machine could last on the internet before being patched enough.
It was crazy that you HAD to upgrade it offline, because it would be owned before you could even get it patched. At the time we saw 10 to 15 minutes tops before it was infected.
In any case, yes, XP was the start of all the things we hate today. Its interesting how much more push back there was back then: anti consumer advocates, government intervention, class action lawsuits, even the EU got their own version because they got involved.
Now everything is even worse, and only the consumers seem to be the ones complaining.
Wow, yeah I completely forgot that we used to connect directly to the internet. No gateway to shield us.
I used to get OS alert popup windows from random people connecting to the local Messenger Service with all sorts of scams.