Before everyone loved XP, they hated it.

[DrainTheSw4mp]

I loved every single Windows version when it was released. Loved XP and the Luna theme, I still look at it and think it looks amazing. It is actually a beautiful theme together with its variants and Bliss wallpaper. Loved Vista too, using Vista-ready hardware it was a very smooth experience. Loved Aero, it was such an exciting, beautiful and strikingly modern UI back then... I also loved the greenish hue that the glass had back then. I loved Windows 7, mostly because of the new taskbar. So good. Loved Windows 8 when it came out, Metro and the gorgeous Start Screen were so fresh. And of course loved the many under the hood improvements. And I'm loving 8.1 on my desktop PC, laptops and tablet.

Too bad i wasn't able to love the pre-XP versions (I'm pretty sure I would have!), but I was just a child and I didn't even have a computer.

I'm looking forward to many more Windows releases in the coming decades... Thank you Microsoft for making the most advanced, iconic and ubiquitous software ever made. Long live Microsoft Windows!

[Krome]

I think Neowin has a lot of success because of XP being around for so long and then the next generations of Windows continuing the trend. 

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20010202063000/https://www.neowin.net/

 

I remember the excitement to get XP and used the infamous FCKGW key before I actually had a chance to purchase it for myself.  Had a friend at work who had gotten his hands on the pirated copy and gave it to me.  I tried it and a few months later got it through a friend who got a deal through his job.  We got XP for something like $20 at the time and I had it that way ever since.  Busted the disk once and got a replacement.  Microsoft eventually blocked the product keys because of too many activations on my end over the years, but I never had any problem getting them to give me at least one more or so. 

 

I have just one machine here (My step daughter's PC)  running XP and only because it won't run Vista, or Win 7.  It has been powered off for a few months and won't be back on under that OS.  It might be time for her to learn Linux. :)

Yeah I for one, knew this site cos of XP.  lol that link you gave, has some old stuff.  Very tempted to vote.

[leesmithg]

no. it was seen as a relief after vista. actually that's how microsoft's release cycle has been

 

Windows ME(hated) -> XP(loved)

Vista(hated) -> 7(loved)

8(hated) -> 9 (presumably loved)

I didn't mind Windows Millennium.

 

I enjoyed making double on it in 2005 when I sold it to a n00b on eBay for ?75.

 

I purchased it for ?35, once I took out my ?5 travel costs to buy it, Brixton to Angel and bus to Walthamstow and back.

 

She said she wanted it because her I.S.P. told her that was the minimum supported o.p.s. for her connection, n00b.

[Wakers]

Oh yea, before Service Pack 2, Windows XP was god-awful. It was hideously unstable, security was laughably weak and it was glitchy as hell.

 

It's funny that a lot of people don't remember that or choose to downplay the problems it had.

 

You know how the BSOD is one of the longest running memes there are, and is one of the biggest image problems MS ever had, and still get poked fun at because of?

 

That came from Windows XP.  Because it happened, and it happened a lot.

[Setnom]

I never had such feelings of hate towards XP like I have towards 8 (start screen and modernui, to be specific). I didn't like the blue luna theme, but the silvery one was fine.

 

So no, never hated XP.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Oh yea, before Service Pack 2, Windows XP was god-awful. It was hideously unstable, security was laughably weak and it was glitchy as hell.

 

It's funny that a lot of people don't remember that or choose to downplay the problems it had.

 

You know how the BSOD is one of the longest running memes there are, and is one of the biggest image problems MS ever had, and still get poked fun at because of?

 

That came from Windows XP.  Because it happened, and it happened a lot.

 

haha...what?  Not really.  BSOD were around a long time before XP and happened much more frequent on the 9x systems.

[DoctorD]

I have to disagree with the post, I can remember quite the excitement from many and myself getting a boatload of free software including Plus! and a 1.3mp digital camera just for buying it. There was a line at Staples about 30 people long waiting for the store to open. After installing everything worked better than it did with Win ME.

[uniacidz]

I loved it. Learnt a lot from it as well

In fact, just only recently upgrading to Windows 7

[+therealDamien Subscriber¹]

I have two machines.

 

one running windows 7 and windows 8.1

 

one running windows xp and its staying that way. works great for whats it used for. 

[Darrian]

I never loathed XP, and was in fact very, very excited by it.  Here is why:

-It was a better, faster version of Windows 2000.

-The watercolor theme from the beta was abandoned, true, but it was not long before the uxstyle was cracked and Binary ported the visual style, at which point it became my default theme for a long, long time.

-While Windows 2000 was geared towards businesses, and Windows Me was geared towards home users, XP was, finally, the convergence of the two operating systems, which meant gaming with the stability of 2000.

-WGA never bothered me; it was quickly and easily cracked.  Even though I was legit I still cracked it, just because I could.

 

I did loath something about XP, though: Internet Explorer.  I praised the heavens when Phoenix was finally (and unexpectedly) released.

[zenica02271977]

Many users here ( and even more that you may support) have looked back upon XP as the greatest OS to come out of Redmond. But very few remember that before XP was loved, it was hated. In fact, it was more than hated, users loathed it. WGA (product activation), the Luna theme, and numerous other technologies had users in a fury, ready to pounce on Redmond as if they were a misbehaving child not listening to their mother (customers), in much the same way users are now with Windows 8. Thanks to the Flux Capacitor we know as the Internet, traces of the frustration can still be found. Ars Technica writer Peter Bright (@DrPizza) brought forth some of that evidence in a new article of his. 

 

Ready for a trip down memory lane? Let's take a look... Memory lane: before everyone loved Windows XP, they hated it!

I never liked Windows XP and in fact never used it. Windows 2000 was way better therefore before i switched to Windows 7 i was on Windows 2000.

[+Warwagon MVC]

in i saw that new laptop had only 2GB of dog slow RAM, a crappy 500GB 5400 RPM HDD, a bottom line AMD APU, Windows 8 x64

 

I had a young guy bring in 6 month old laptop with similar specs telling me how slow it is and asking me to do something. Well the main issue wasn't the ram but the slow hard drive and CPU. I wanted to say "Sorry there isn't much I can do you bought a piece of ######.

[Dashel]

I hated the look enough I joined Neowin. :)

[Rickkins]

Personally, I loved it right from the beginning. Not to say I found it perfect, but it was really good imho. I used it right up until 7 came out.

 

In fact, I have always kept the taskbar setup from xp, thru both 7 & 8.

 

Mind you, I never had any serious issues with WinMe either. Not sure what that says...

[PGHammer]

Many of those that I knew that went from 2000 to XP hated it because of the loss of stability and it's out of the box ugliness.

Many of those that I knew that went from 98SE/ME loved it because of the improved stability but hated it because of the increased hardware requirements.

 

I hated it for the most part, with the exception of the fact that you could theme it relatively easily and there were some exceptionally beautiful themes out there (and especially on here).  In my opinion it wasn't even a passable OS at all, but it was an important stepping stone to get to where we are today - boy what an improvement it is!

What loss of stability (compared to 2000 Professional)?  Yes - I'm quite serious.

Exactly how much difference (in terms of the underpinnings) was there between 2000 Pro and XP Pro?  None whatsoever.  Even the differences between XP Pro and XP Home were quite minimal - in fact, there were only two - in XP Home, all users were Administrators by default (XP Home targeted upgraders from either ME or 98SE) and the UI was the "double-wide" Start menu that would, in fact, remain the default through both Vista and 7.  The real reason was the UI change - from the corporate UI which 2000 Pro retained (carryover from NT4) to the "Fisher Price"/Etch-A-Sketch UI (both were used in disparagement - and here on Neowin) of XP Pro/XP Home.

[xdot.tk]

Haven't read the whole thread. Just the first page so here's my take...

 

I too hated it and still do in comparison to Windows 2000 Pro. XP added unnecessary bloat so that the masses would like it just like Redmond continues to do to this day with NT6 line.  :angry:

I eventually had to leave my trusty Win2K behind when some programs just wouldn't behave as reliably they would on XP. This was somewhere between 2003 and 2005.

 

I even hated W2K when it initially came out! I was like "What are all these thing running in Device Manager!". Didn't take me long to fall in love with how rock solid NT was in comparison to the 9x series and quickly adopted it.

[+E.Worm Jimmy Subscriber¹]

I Loved it from the start!!!!!!

Used it when it was still called Whistler (waaaay before final release)

I worked better for my needs then the corporate geared 2000, and it was a magnificent stable os in comparison to Windows Me, that I tried for only one week, before reverding to Win 98SE.       Win98SE was very good, but XP was amazing.

 

 

I did not like the look though, so I just switched to classic look and uninstalled the bloat ;)

then luckily, I had neowin!

Its one of the reasons I ended up staying here for long:  WinXP styles!     Good times!

 

 

Bad comparison with Win 8 though :s    XP brough childish colors, while most of the navigation was the same.    Win8 brough flat childish colors, but also changed the whole way that you operate!

 

I never loathed XP, and was in fact very, very excited by it.  Here is why:

-It was a better, faster version of Windows 2000.

-The watercolor theme from the beta was abandoned, true, but it was not long before the uxstyle was cracked and Binary ported the visual style, at which point it became my default theme for a long, long time.

-While Windows 2000 was geared towards businesses, and Windows Me was geared towards home users, XP was, finally, the convergence of the two operating systems, which meant gaming with the stability of 2000.

-WGA never bothered me; it was quickly and easily cracked.  Even though I was legit I still cracked it, just because I could.

 

I did loath something about XP, though: Internet Explorer.  I praised the heavens when Phoenix was finally (and unexpectedly) released.

 

yes yes. pretty much what i though.

[Noir Angel]

Mind you, I never had any serious issues with WinMe either. Not sure what that says...

 

In all honesty I never found it any more unstable than 98 was

[Dot Matrix]

9x was nothing but DLL Hell for me. I hated that.

[Darrian]

Haven't read the whole thread. Just the first page so here's my take...

 

I too hated it and still do in comparison to Windows 2000 Pro. XP added unnecessary bloat so that the masses would like it just like Redmond continues to do to this day with NT6 line.  :angry:

I eventually had to leave my trusty Win2K behind when some programs just wouldn't behave as reliably they would on XP. This was somewhere between 2003 and 2005.

 

I even hated W2K when it initially came out! I was like "What are all these thing running in Device Manager!". Didn't take me long to fall in love with how rock solid NT was in comparison to the 9x series and quickly adopted it.

 

I agree greatly with your observation about the bloat.  However, someone made a wonderful utility called XPLite, which you could use to strip all the unnecessary ###### out of XP.  It's really hard not to like XP, because it was in no way worse than 2000 and it was much better in many ways, not the least of which was speed.  Switch to the classic theme, strip out the ###### with XPLite, and essentially you have a version of Windows 2000 that boots faster, is better for gaming, is just as stable, and probably takes up less disk space.  Don't get me wrong, I adored Windows 2000, too, it just made no sense to hate XP.  By the time Vista came out I was grateful there was finally an update, though; XP was definitely getting dated.

[sinetheo]

XP is not Windows 8. Do not try to make it sound the same.

 

XP was extremely popular and caught on fast unlike Windows 8 after over a year and a half is barely catching on. Yes I remember there were the Windows 98 die hards and some businesses who prefered to lose more money being hacked and downtime sticking with Windows 98SE than to use XP because the cost accountants didn't want to pay for software upgrades. 

 

 

However today 90% of all corporations are refusing to leave XP behind until last year or two unlike XP. The companies that held onto Windows 98 for life in 2004 were in the tiny 15% range. Not the 90% who are kicking and screaming leaving Windows 7.

 

Where I work we are making people local admins and hacking and disabling security to make XP only apps run in Windows 7 rather than pay for an upgrade. But we waited until the last minute because XP was such an awesome OS and the best ever written according to the staff. If XP were supported for 10 more years they would keep running it until 2024.

 

Almost everyone loved XP. Yes I had Windows 2000 too back in the early XP era and used it for many years too. However it did not have universal plug and play nor a firewall. Want to do a .torrent? Manually do an exception UGH. IE was stuck at IE 6. DirectX stagnated etc. 

[xdot.tk]

I agree greatly with your observation about the bloat.  However, someone made a wonderful utility called XPLite, which you could use to strip all the unnecessary ######## out of XP.  It's really hard not to like XP, because it was in no way worse than 2000 and it was much better in many ways, not the least of which was speed.  Switch to the classic theme, strip out the ######## with XPLite, and essentially you have a version of Windows 2000 that boots faster, is better for gaming, is just as stable, and probably takes up less disk space.  Don't get me wrong, I adored Windows 2000, too, it just made no sense to hate XP.  By the time Vista came out I was grateful there was finally an update, though; XP was definitely getting dated.

 

I bought XP Lite...

 

I used to strip the hell out of Windows. This was my 2K project which I did manually after reading a lot of stuff on MSFN.org....

 

 

I don't remove anything these days. I mean I turn the silly themes off and use Windows Classic other unnecessary processes but that's about it.

I need to have stock system to help peeps on forums. I can quickly see if a file they're talking about comes stock on XP this way.

[Dot Matrix]

XP is not Windows 8. Do not try to make it sound the same.

 

XP was extremely popular and caught on fast unlike Windows 8 after over a year and a half is barely catching on. Yes I remember there were the Windows 98 die hards and some businesses who prefered to lose more money being hacked and downtime sticking with Windows 98SE than to use XP because the cost accountants didn't want to pay for software upgrades. 

 

 

However today 90% of all corporations are refusing to leave XP behind until last year or two unlike XP. The companies that held onto Windows 98 for life in 2004 were in the tiny 15% range. Not the 90% who are kicking and screaming leaving Windows 7.

 

Where I work we are making people local admins and hacking and disabling security to make XP only apps run in Windows 7 rather than pay for an upgrade. But we waited until the last minute because XP was such an awesome OS and the best ever written according to the staff. If XP were supported for 10 more years they would keep running it until 2024.

 

Almost everyone loved XP. Yes I had Windows 2000 too back in the early XP era and used it for many years too. However it did not have universal plug and play nor a firewall. Want to do a .torrent? Manually do an exception UGH. IE was stuck at IE 6. DirectX stagnated etc. 

XP didn't catch on fast. XP didn't enjoy success until after SP2, which was delivered nearly *three* years after RTM.

 

Also, I'd like a source for "90% of corporations..." The majority of companies have upgraded at this point, and enjoy a healthy Windows 7 network. If you're "hacking" Windows 7, you're doing things wrong. Your applications will fail sooner, rather than later - And that isn't going to be anyone's fault but your own.

[strotee]

The majority of companies have upgraded at this point, and enjoy a healthy Windows 7 network.

Source?

[Dot Matrix]

Source?

Marketshare and common sense.