Ranking of the 4 Modern Windows OSs

[Dot Matrix]

I wouldn't call XP or Vista "modern" anymore. XP is 12 years old, and Vista is 7. At these ages, they're dinosaurs, even more so after recent changes in consumer trends. Hell, XP isn't even 64bit capable (Well, it is, but it's ****, and no ever used it).

In any case:

1) Windows 8 (Setting the base for the next 20 years).

2) Windows 7 (Classic Windows all grown up, ready to take the next step in life).

3) Windows Vista (Set up a solid foundation that Windows badly needed).

4) Windows XP (Unstable, unsecured, ancient pile of junk, that no consumer or business should have been forced to run as long as they did. It completely trashed the "Windows" brand name).

[Jim K Global Moderator]

4) Windows XP (Unstable, unsecured, ancient pile of junk, that no consumer or business should have been forced to run as long as they did. It completely trashed the "Windows" brand name).

hehe...what? Trashed the "Windows" brand name? Maybe you are confusing XP with Windows ME?

[Dot Matrix]

hehe...what? Trashed the "Windows" brand name? Maybe you are confusing XP with Windows ME?

No. I just don't see XP as the poster child everyone else does. XP was inherently unstable, wholly unsecured (and suffered many malware attacks, buffer overflows, etc), and had horrible resource management.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

No. I just don't see XP as the poster child everyone else does. XP was inherently unstable, wholly unsecured (and suffered many malware attacks, buffer overflows, etc), and had horrible resource management.

Compared to 7 and 8...sure...I can agree. I just find it funny that you think Windows XP, which is still largely used today.... completely trashed the Windows brand name. Maybe you meant Windows 8?

[Dot Matrix]

Compared to 7 and 8...sure...I can agree. I just find it funny that you think Windows XP, which is still largely used today.... completely trashed the Windows brand name. Maybe you meant Windows 8?

No, I meant Windows XP. I watched a lot of people buys Macs because they were fed up with being compromised by drive bys, or having to constantly restore their system. XP was a cesspool of poor code, and sloppy practices.

[Max Norris]

No, I meant Windows XP. I watched a lot of people buys Macs because they were fed up with being compromised by drive bys, or having to constantly restore their system. XP was a cesspool of poor code, and sloppy practices.

Mmm can somewhat agree with this; never had much issue with the malware (safe computing habits, not running as an admin, etc) but it was unstable as all hell, could get Explorer to crash just by looking at it funny, poor multitasking and resource management, x64 was a crapshoot, etc. Probably my longest usage of a Linux desktop was during the XP days, back with 7 though, much better. (Not meant as a bash against Linux in general, just prefer 7's desktop.) Wouldn't call XP a failure by any stretch of the imagination, still having a big following is a testament to that, but it got more than it's share of bad rep from all its problems. Really no reason to be used nowadays though unless you got some dinosaur software that somehow fails to run on a newer version and a VM (or an upgrade..) isn't viable.

[raid0]

Windows 7 - Best OS

Windows XP - Was great OS for 10 years, great to run on VM now

Windows 8 - Half disaster (personally). It's very close to W7, but it's not as good

Windows Vista - Never used it very much, I was on OS X for 4 years when it was released

[Dashel]

Hard to rank without a more specific criteria or context, such as what modern is supposed to mean.

WinXP (2003) for longevity

Win7 (2008R2) for polish, though could easily take the longevity crown long term.

Win8/Vista (2012/2008) are about a tie right now but both serve as important 'bridge' OSs. Neither executed particularly well though.

I watched a lot of people buys Macs because they were fed up with being compromised by drive bys, or having to constantly restore their system. XP was a cesspool of poor code, and sloppy practices.

Holy Flamebait! More proof you're an Apple plant to weaken Microsoft!

[Ve7878]

Windows 8/Windows Vista - I like them equally, surprisingly.

Windows XP

Windows 7

The reason I rank Windows 7 the lowest is due to the high amount of bugs which I've experienced when rolling it out.

The folder redirection issues have been an absolute joke and there have been various hotfixes and things which had be rolled out for it over time, sometimes folder redirection would fail all together for no real reason.

Offline files have never worked correctly until recently, the cache become out of date on various machines and a FixIT had to be applied to various machines, this was a known bug which now has a hotfix.

The way it updates the desktop.ini's on folder redirection which meant that it gave all user home drives on the fileserver an alias of "My Documents", no real fix for this, just workarounds apparently this is "by design", one of the workarounds (Blocking desktop.ini) caused up to 15 minute logon times.

Until a recent patch logging on with cached credentials could take up to 10 minutes to log on, this in addition to offline files bugs caused home laptop experiences to be rubbish initially.

There have been various hotfixes which have fixed the above issues now but these sort of issues weren't really prevalent over the course of using Vista & XP and the few Windows 8 machines which have been rolled out so far have been much smoother.

[NEVER85]

No, I meant Windows XP. I watched a lot of people buys Macs because they were fed up with being compromised by drive bys, or having to constantly restore their system. XP was a cesspool of poor code, and sloppy practices.

You're my new favorite poster. :laugh: Not sarcasm btw. Hated XP too. Remember this fun stuff?

[LowProfile]

1.- Windows 8 -> Like the Start Screen, like to see all the updates (news, weather, etc), fast reliable and the improved search

2.- Windows 7 -> Reliable

3.- Windows Vista -> The misundertood one (it required the latest hardware in his time 2006-2007)

4.- Windows XP -> The unified kernel and .NET philosophy , ended the DLL inferno, so it was the first truly reliable Windows

[Astra.Xtreme]

1. Windows 7 - Fast and rock-solid

2. Windows XP - Reliable and compatible

3. Windows Vista - Nothing really wrong with it, but it was a quickly abandoned OS

4. Windows 8 - Disorganized and the UI gets in the way. With Start8, I'd move it up to #2 though.

[f0rk_b0mb]

1. Windows 7 - Best OS ever.

2. Windows Vista - Had a few issues with it before SP1, but it was pretty solid for the most part.

3. Windows XP - Fast when it first came out but by SP2, it was slow and bloated. Didn't play nice with my card reader for some reason.

4. Windows Blue M1 Leak - Look's nice...Metro's starting to evolve into a usable platform. Hope more improvements are made.

5. Windows 8 - Liked it at first, ran it as my main OS during the betas, but I seriously thought Microsoft was going to listen to our feedback like they did in the Windows 7 betas. The whole OS is under cooked, missing core/killer features. I don't see a need to upgrade. Incompatible with some hardware like sound cards.

[BobSlob]

1. Windows 8

2. Windows 7

3. Windows Vista

4. Windows XP

The way Microsoft intended

[123456789A]

1. Windows 7

2. Windows 8

3. Windows XP

Never tried Vista.

Haven't really given Windows 8 a full run through yet either.

[Azies]

I'll make a list after Windows 8 exits it's "Adjustment Phase", that spot of unstability right after launch that EVERY Windows OS suffered from, then I'll post my rank.

[Steffan]

1) Windows 7 - Good and stable OS much like XP back in the days

2) Windows 8 - It has a lot of potential

3) Windows Vista - It has its issues but made manufactures create better drivers

4) Windows XP - Still a good OS but showing its age

[Marcel Berger]

1. Windows XP

2. Windows 7

3. Windows Vista

4. Windows 8

Windows 8 is the worst OS ever made by Microsoft!!!

It has an unuseable UI!!!

[Quillz]

1) Windows 8

2) Windows 7

3) Windows Vista

4) Windows XP

[DrainTheSw4mp]

1) Windows 6.2: many improvements, including: the Start Screen, Live Tiles (at-a-glance info like weather and news), built in email (killer feature for me) and calendar, notifications, better performance and less memory usage compared to Win7, IE10, built in antivirus, better task manager, improved file manager, App Store, faster startup times, free unlimited music streaming with Xbox Music, sytem-wide spell checking (it even works for Desktop apps, there's a COM-based API for that), & more.

2) Windows 6.1: the new taskbar (killer feature), Aero Snap & Peek, jump lists, fine-tuned Aero, Direct3D 11, Thumbnail Toolbars, multiple minor improvements.

3) Windows 6.0: beautiful Aero theme, much better security compared to XP (UAC), newer hardware support, live taskbar previews, Gadgets were cool at the time, new Start Menu with search, .NET included, new Windows Explorer, SuperFetch, Direct3D 10.

4) Windows 5.1: first consumer oriented version of NT-based Windows, much more stable than Windows Me (not much changed from Win2000), gorgeous Luna theme & variations (I still love them), new Start Menu, very low memory usage, ClearType, built in WiFi support (SP2+), many other performance improvements.

Every single version of Windows has a special place in my heart, but as Bill says, "higher is better". :)

[nowimnothing]

Personally, I think it got better with every version. Never had any problems with Vista, though they definitely tidied things up in Win7. I expect I'll say the same thing about 8 ("Never had any problems with 8, though they definitely tidied things up with 8.1/Blue")

[MDboyz]

1 - Windows 8 - It just gets better and better.

2 - Windows 7 - Fast and good performance, but just so dated UI.

3 - Windows XP - After couple service pack, it is a nice and stable OS.

4 - Windows Vista - Thing either works or just don't

[syobon999]

1. Windows 7- Stable, fast, bug-free, largest modern and popular support for the remaining of this decade

2. Windows XP - Vintage/lacks some support in modern graphics area, otherwise OK

3. Windows Vista - Usable after SP1, slower and not as snappy as 7.

4. Windows 8 - Metro sucks, the performance improvement isn't luring me or the millions of win7 users.

[Davo]

1.) Windows 8 - I haven't found anything that this OS can't do out of the box that I need. It's saved me from installing a gazillion drivers/programs.

2.) Windows XP - I used it for so long because it was a big turning point for Windows

3.) Windows 7 - It's improved over Windows XP and fixed many of the nagging things about Vista

4.) Windows Vista - A fine OS in retrospect but living through it was terrible

[siah1214]

1) Windows 8 - Can't live without the start screen, going back to 7 feels to me now like 7 to XP felt.

2) Windows 7 - Despite that, Windows 7 is an amazing, rock solid OS. The first MS I used and thought "Hey, this is really cool".

3) Windows XP - Loved that I could change the fisher price interface :p It had its quirks, I upgraded from 98 SE to XP and a lot of the annoyances went away but there were still plenty

I never used Vista so I can't rank it.