What is your favorite Windows OS?

[W32.Backdoor.KillAV.E]

Win 8. It's Win 7 on steroids.

Its faster at almost everything, uses less RAM than 7, it's atleast as stable if not more so, it's far more versatile than any other Windows OS (or any OS not just Windows), has better battery life than any other Windows OS, it's the most secure, and works better with my multi-monitors. And it's the little things, like built in Hyper-V and being able to natively mount ISO's and create VHD's without 3rd party software bloat.

People only like older OS's because they're sentimental or very used to it. Win 8 is technically the best.

I can see Windows Blue eventually being my fave once it's complete, i've played with the leaked build and like all the improvements so far. RAM usage is down even further as well.

[AsherGZ]

Windows Blue. And I'm serious. The classic Windows stuff in 8 is perfect and I can't imagine going back to 7 ever. However the metro side needs a little polishing up, and so far what we've seen in Blue, they're getting there.

[Kenny McCormick]

Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012 closely followed by Windows 2000...

[+Tyranade Subscriber²]

Windows XP. I had so much fun Tweaking that and doing all kinds of Customization with it I would literally spend weeks after a Re-Install tweaking it and changing how it looks and only ever had an issue with doing that kind of thing if I screwed up but I loved doing it. Windows 7 in my opinion is Equal to Windows XP for me but I don't do a lot of customization with it as I don't see the need too. My lest favorites are Windows 8 and Windows ME for me I hated Windows ME with a passion, I re-installed that so often I memorized the Product Key and could enter it in under 8 Seconds, as for Windows 8 change is good but I don't like the whole Implementation of the "Start Screen".

[WiselyJohn]

I love everything about Windows 7. Everything just works like it's suppose to.window 7 better than window xp.

[derkim]

I guess Windows 2000

[Jim K Global Moderator]

Win 7.

[derviskemal]

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Depends on the machine -

On my laptop which has a small screen (1366x768, although not touch) I find Windows 8 a much better experience. I guess this is because of the short travelling distance for my thumb between the touch pad and Windows key/rest of the keyboard and because the start menu used to take 1/3 of the screen anyway, as well as using pretty much all apps full screen even when running Windows 7 on the same machine.

Whilst on the big screen (27" 1440P) desktop, Windows 7 just edges it, but that is because it just doesn't make as much sense running full screen apps. I expect Microsoft will fix this over the next few versions of Windows.

I can totally understand the focus for Windows 8, because most normal users are laptop users with screens around 1366x768 resolution.

After that Vista > 2000 > XP > NT4.0 > 98SE > 98 > 95OSR2 > 95 > 3.11 > 3.1 > ME - that's pretty much the only versions I have used in any real heavy capacity.

[Orange]

Windows 7, was a big fan of Windows Vista till i found out true behind how much of a hogger it was etc. So installed Windows 7 and I'm in love :p

But my ultimate favorite os has to be Windows ME.. i know people hate it but for me it was lovely :p

[SharpGreen]

Depends on the machine -

On my laptop which has a small screen (1366x768, although not touch) I find Windows 8 a much better experience. I guess this is because of the short travelling distance for my thumb between the touch pad and Windows key/rest of the keyboard and because the start menu used to take 1/3 of the screen anyway, as well as using pretty much all apps full screen even when running Windows 7 on the same machine.

Whilst on the big screen (27" 1440P) desktop, Windows 7 just edges it, but that is because it just doesn't make as much sense running full screen apps. I expect Microsoft will fix this over the next few versions of Windows.

I can totally understand the focus for Windows 8, because most normal users are laptop users with screens around 1366x768 resolution.

After that Vista > 2000 > XP > NT4.0 > 98SE > 98 > 95OSR2 > 95 > 3.11 > 3.1 > ME - that's pretty much the only versions I have used in any real heavy capacity.

I have to wonder about these folks who rail against full screen apps. Do you folks not maximize windows on the desktop side? as its pretty much the same thing.

[nekrosoft13]

only logical choice,

7, then xp in close second.

worst windows os, windows me, then vista and 8

[astropheed Veteran]

Windows 7 > XP > 95 > NT/2000 > Getting kicked in the nuts > 3.1 > ME > 98 > Vista

I've still not really used Windows 8 enough to comment.

[WHS]

I like Windows 7 best. But I also have Vista on 2 laptops and Windows 8 in virtual on an external SSD.

[simonlang]

i don't really know. probably has been windows xp. ran stable, got some nice new features and even better, it was the (first?) last really easy and widely customizable windows out there. you could get real themes for it. not these pseudo themes in win7 and + where the biggest change is a new wallpaper how fascinating

[REM2000]

Clients

Windows 8 - I didn't like it at first but love the speed, reliability and great memory management. I think this is the first windows which i am hapy to just leave on without reboot every day or so to get the memory back in order.

Windows 2000 - Incredible release, i was a big fan of the NT range and this fixed a lot of problems with NT. Fast, lean and very stable.

Windows 95 - Loved it at release, great new UI at the time and finally a version of Windows to get me away from DOS. i would say OSR2 was my frav as it brought FAT32 and better USB. Still can remember the feeling of loading up 2 full music videos from the CDROM Weezer's buddly holly and the other one, full screen it was amazing!!

Windows NT 4.0 - Incredible OS. ultra lean and very quick, very stable i loved it. I used to dual boot between Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.

Windows ME - Fastest version of Windows for games. When compared to Win95/98 and XP Windows ME consistently provided higher framerates, it was really good at games.

Windows 7, great rewrite from Microsoft, what Vista should have been. started the incredible trend of Windows needing less resources than it previous versions. Loved the new task bar and performance..

Clients i hated

Windows 3.0/3.1 and 3.11 - Slower and not really of any use. I only used these when i had to use office. Extra memory would mess up and slow up DOS games, windows games were non-existent apart from solitare and the mine thing. It was alright for work, but was unstable and just horrible. Windows 3.11 went some way to fix some of the networking issues, NT 3.51 solved some of these however at the time Novell Netware wiped the floor with it in a network.

Windows XP, taking the great performance of Windows 2000 and slapping on a childish UI and other junk which slowed it down. I hated XP, only used it when i had to, the only version of XP i didn't mind was XP x64 and that was because it was mainly Win2k3 SP1 and performed quite well. XP was a massive pain for me as XP really come into it's stride during the virus years so i was constantly maintaining antivirus software and cleaning viruses, bloody thing was like a virus magnet. SP2 helped a bit, but it took years to get the virus situation under control.

Windows 98 for the same reasons as XP, it took the lean and fast Windows 95 and stuck on a crappy UI with the extra crapola IE4 active desktop component, what a great way to throw very expensive memory down the drain, that and those horrible themes, it makes me wince now. People getting PC's with 8MB RAM and loading every theme and having that crap active desktop, the PC used to simply struggle doing that let alone any work or playing games.

Vista - Hated it, used it in Beta and on release multiple times. Resource requirements where high at the time, problems when copying files from/to usb. Copying over a network would crawl if playing a video. Crashes with video drivers, most other drivers not working. Memory usage bugs such as SVCHOST and others. Problems going to sleep, problems coming out of sleep. Problems with wifi, especially when going in and out of sleep. Vista was beta till SP1. (PS problems described were not on a single PC but on a range of desktops and laptops).

Servers

Windows 2012 - near perfect, give me checksum in storage spaces with multiple file copies across the array a la ZFS to prevent bit rot and it would be perfect. Performance is great, love being able to cut down the UI, love de-dup, works exactly as described, uses hardly any resources especially when compared to ZFS. Stable and just generally great!

Windows 2008R2 - great version, first proper version of Hyper-V from the buggy Win2008 version

Windows 2003 - Very fast, great performance, very stable.

Windows 2000 - remember the big switch from domains to active directory. The fun getting to grips with DNS on a local network. It was great though, finally got the novell features that they used to brag about, a full on directory based system. Stable system too

Windows NT 4.0 Server - loved it, used to love deploying this, this an exchange or SQL Server was so much fun. Easy and would just work. The kind of server you setup and forget as patches were generally only applied when there was a direct problem with the server as most of these were offline anyway. The amount of times one of these would be setup and forgotten about as they just ran without any problems. I haven't done it yet but i want to test out NT 4.0 as i think NT 4.0 actually has better thousands of small files file sharing performance than even Windows 2012. I remember when switching some users from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 and it causing a problem as some applications such as Sage Line would be comprised of 1000's of small files and Windows 2000 couldn't match the file sharing performance.

Servers i hated,

None they were all great, i didn't mention Win2008 as i didn't really bother with this version and jumped pretty much from 2003 to win2k8r2

[garwin]

XP with some themes

[]SK[]

Windows 2000 was a huge leap in terms of being stable. So much so XP was built from it. From then on the OS has been very stable. Its hard to say which is the best OS as over time they generally get better. Windows 7 currently though is my best even though Windows 8 is an improvement the current Metro stuff knocks it back down.

[CSAREBEL]

3.11 was good at the time.

95 was iffy until rev C then it was decent.

98 beat 95, especially 98SE

ME was the best of the 9x os's.

2k was decent

loved XP even more than ME, and almost as much as 7

hated vista

love 7 and stull use it.

dont like 8-8.1 but no real stability issues, I just like 7 better.

10  time will tell but it looks promising at the moment.

[gameboy1977]

I like Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, and 7, 8.1, and 10. I am forwarding to get new Windows 10 very soon.

 

I don't like Windows Vista, and 8. I really hate Vista so much, because it keep crash often, and eat memory too much.

 

I still have old WIndows Me CD and book here, and it was upgrade.

 

I tested Windows 7 RC 1 in 2009 to 2010, and it was so great OS ever! I will collect Windows 7 one day.

[Draggendrop Veteran]

Might sound silly, but I had a blast with NT 4.0, I could not get enough play time with it (also messed it up good a few times) next after that was Windows 2000, which would run darn near any engineering program I threw at it....fun times.....

[+therealDamien Subscriber¹]

I like windows 98 back in the day. 

 

 

I liked windows 7 but legacy programs for dvr services, I use almost everyday cause aero to disable and slow the system down.

 

I love windows 8.1 and now windows 10 due to having more multimedia usage with the store apps and more html5 compatibility. and my legacy programs actually worked better, but still slowed the system down. ( but tomorrow Im going to be switching over to a different dvr streaming service, so now the compatibility problems should be gone.

 

incase some people dont know windows 7 lacks some html5 browser encoding that windows 8.1 and above have.

 

 

for now windows 10 is my fav windows system.

[tompkin]

My favorite versions were probably NT 4 and Windows 7. The only versions I missed were ME and 8. Sitting here today I don't feel like I missed a whole lot.

I'll tell you what I wish Windows 10 had, however. That's a "magic feature". 

When Windows 95 came out, it had "Plug and Play". For those of us who had struggled to get devices working together it was like magic. It really was. You just plugged things in and most of the time it just worked.
 

In Windows 10, maybe if they "nail" OneDrive integration that would be a big thing.

[binaryzero]

^ NT4 was great, especially when I came from OS/2. 

 

http://imgur.com/HgdOsku - I took a month or two back when I was moving into this apartment, found my box full of nostalgia software.

 

Windows 2000 was also great, after a couple of service packs, can't remember which one.  

[tompkin]

^ NT4 was great, especially when I came from OS/2. 

 

http://imgur.com/HgdOsku - I took a month or two back when I was moving into this apartment, found my box full of nostalgia software.

 

Windows 2000 was also great, after a couple of service packs, can't remember which one.  

Nice! I have tons of disks. Most of them were from MSDN back in the day, but I've got disks for just about everything in the mid-late 90's.