I speak of the various Windows O/S's of the past 20+ years. Win7 is actually pretty stable for me...so far. ;-)

95 / XP / Vista / 7 user here... I skipped 98, 2000, and ME.

95 was fine when I was using it, I doubt I saw crashes back then. XP and Vista were bad in the beginning, yes, but mainly due to lack of driver support. So far, they haven't failed me... well, Vista hasn't failed me actually, XP pissed me off so hard once when it started fucking up itself for no good reason (had to reset the motherboard to fix it)).

I had problems with 7 the first few days after its release, but after finding the proper drivers for the laptop, don't know if I've had more than a dozen crashes so far (at least half of them were because of Stardock's crappy ObjectDock).

8 is looking good so far, implementing more of the Metro design philosophy, and also it has tighter integration with Windows Live, something which I applaud, since I use the service on my phone too.

EDIT: But no matter what exact OS we use, the OSs will only get better in time as the code is being optimized and cleaned up more and more, and various outdated features that can cause problems are being removed.

I went through TRS-Dos (TRS-80), MS-Dos, Win3.1/95/ME/XP/7. I'd say XP was pretty good to me, but 7 so far is my favorite for stability. And I agree, OS's do seem to be getting better (as evidenced by XP & 7 being the only ones I was really happy with).

They're definitely getting better, the issue is that it seems to take MS so long in order to get things that other OSes have gotten right previously. It should not have taken until Vista to get a set up where you don't have to be admin all the time in order to just use your computer.

And, MS has yet to make it convenient to install an OS to multiple partitions the way that other OSes do, which makes it a real pain if you want to reinstall or upgrade the OS without having to transfer the profile. I've messed around a bit with the various programs they've provided, but none of them work as well as tarring up a home directory and transporting it to a new system does on Linux or *BSD.

Damn Microsoft is supporting only 30 countries in the world for GFWL enabled titles and if you are leaving in that countries you can't play multiplayer sections of the games and also you can't get support. Valve is worldwide for Steamworks enabled games for multiplayer. Also GFWL is consolish and sucks but Steam is good for real PC gamers. You can't even have realtime chat in GFWL but you can Steam. GFWL is console fanboys but Steam is for PC gamers that is why I love Steam and hate GFWL.

And yes Steam is DRM, and it is the best and problemless DRM in the world.

The subject here is not GfWL or Steam, but the integration of one of these two with a console equivalent.

Where's the issue then? Your premise is based on the integration between PC and console being a form of complaint on one and a form of praise on the other.

Yet, far as I can tell, barely anyone's complaining about GFWL live's PC-Console integration?

So ... end of discussion?

Actually, The Witcher 2 has no DRM in the version that can be considered published by CDProject, the gog.com version. And I'm pretty sure they pushed Atari as much as possible for the Enhanced version of "The Witcher" to not have DRM either. My opinion is that it's Atari to blame that CDProjekt games have DRM. And, think of it, a game with DRM in gog.com would be unthinkable, I consider it an important motivation for the existence of gog.com, not just a sales pitch.

steam does the same thing, 90% of what the client does is try to rope you into buying more crap only from steam.

Keep in mind that Valve was formed by a bunch of managers from microsoft.

I have no experience with the Steam/PS3 systems despite owning a PS3. I'm indifferent to the whole matter. I like Steam, but I'm no fan boy. I actually despised Steam when I was forced to use it over WON, since it was incredibly unstable on launch.

Xbox Live is a nice system. It's smooth, streamlined, and everyone can access every part of it with ease. Games for Windows Live is absolute shit. Everything it tries to do Steam does 10x better. If you want an example of how poor of a system GFWL is, get a disc based version of Fallout 3 and see how long it takes to patch it, IF GFWL doesn't crash on download, or doesn't let you log in. It took me 6 restarts last time because GFWL client kept updating every time.

I wasn't familiar with this development before reading this thread and have learned alot.
+1 to the community :-D

My hate for M$ is primarily directed at their "Media Transfer Protocol".

1: This screwed up my MP3 in XP. It would stay connected for a few seconds and disconnect for no good reason. And only on my computer.

2: Cameras. Previews from my camera in explorer is very low-res in 7. In XP, cameras were treated like they had 24 images at most like 35mm film systems, or at least it wasn't updated to care for those with 500+ images on the memory card; One tiny window that couldn't be resized and only showing 16 thumbnails or so at once. But if I use a memcard reader instead, problems solved!

Using explorer to select-drag-drop is so much easier than half-assed software supposed to make the most basic computer operations, well..."easier".

Call me a geezer but I don't use my phone for playing games... I use it for... making phone calls.

I see your point but I'm not sure punishing them the one time they managed to not fuck up sends the correct message.
Geezer!:)

Okay on a serious note, these phones have better processors than desktops had years ago. You can buy a stripped down flip phone if you want, but it's no surprise this is happening (i.e. people are trying to use this awesome hardware).
Yep it's much more about killing the second hand market than piracy. Piracy is just a great whipping boy.