Win 3.1 good
Windows 95 bad
Windows 98 okay-ish
Windows 98 SE good
Windows ME bad
Windows 2000 good but not for games
Windows XP good
Windows Vista okay-ish
Windows 7 good
Windows 8 good + lots of whining babies

= reality :p

Last week, I've seen living proof that Windows 8 is far more stable and reliable than Windows 7 which confirms once more to me, that Windows 8 is worth the upgrade. Metro is dead easy to disable anyway if you're really that allergic to it.

Ironically with the talk about Star Trek, Threshold was the title of quite possibly the worst episode in the history of Star Trek. So that part doesn't bode well for this version of Windows.

But it's an even number!!1
Fair enough, I was actually considering getting 8 with my new laptop, but all this talk of 9 has made me wonder whether it'd be better to stick with 7 for now and see how 9 turns out. I can always switch to 8 if 9 turns out bad.

If you have Windows 7, you don't really have to upgrade if you don't want to - the most important changes were made in Vista already, Windows 7 tweaked those and Windows 8 tweaked those further. People thinking they don't have to upgrade from Windows XP on hardware that can handle it, are being ridiculous, however.

The gap from Vista to Win8 is worth it, though, since Windows 8 is dirt cheap. Especially for laptops, Vista wasn't too good because of high power usage. On desktop PCs, Vista, after all the updates and 7 years of decent drivers, is stable and runs just fine.

Don't forget that, to my guess, 90% of complaints about Vista were caused by
a) people who had gotten too used to WinXP and didn't want anything different
b) people who ran outdated hardware and expected Vista to run fine
c) hardware manufacturers that couldn't be bothered to release decent drivers which caused the most problems

Pin all the managers and stuff to taskbar was the quickest way to solve that problem. That and various keyboard shortcuts let me pretty much completely avoid the start screen.
I use classic start with Windows 8.1 on my desktop and laptop, and it works pretty much just like Windows 7 (Notice a slight performance increase, as well as some new keyboard shortcuts, that makes it worth using. Also, I get it for free legally). Might work with Server 2012 as well, but haven't tested it.

Well, I have to get a new copy of Windows either way, so it's really down to whether or not it's worth avoiding 8 or not.

I'm really getting nervous again whether it will break backwards compatibility with some (older) games. Just because I am in a process of maybe buying a new PC (as I was thinking of giving/selling my still-powerful 1½ years old PC to someone, instead of buying him a new but weaker PC, and later buying myself even a faster PC), so depending when I decide to buy the new PC, it might come with Windows 9 by default?

My current PC still has both Windows 7 and 8.1 installed side by side, and yes there are a handful of games that seemed to have problems on 8, and work better (or at all) on 7. Damn, decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll keep my current PC after all, and buy that kid some cheapo Acer that breaks in a year.

Just a thought - Metro might have had SOME use on a desktop PC as a big-picture-esque function if it could actually be controlled properly using a gamepad. Unfortunately MS didn't do that either. Maybe for Win9?

Keep your 7 license (sell the box with only 8 on it) and install it side-by-side with 9 on the new machine?

I think it was mainly for business use, but it was quite good for home use too. As far as I could tell, it run all the games that XP did, I think it even supported all the same DirectX versions as XP, and it also offered similar "compatibility modes" to get e.g. old Win9x games to run on it, like XP did too.

The only problems I found for Win2000 for e.g. gaming use was that e.g. ATI graphics drivers for Win2000 were lagging a bit behind XP drivers, but they were still in a good level.

Another blow was when Valve suddenly stopped supporting Windows 2000 with Steam, meaning that all the Steam games I had bought for Windows 2000, suddenly ceased to run (just because the Steam client suddenly refused to even start on Windows 2000). That was my major wake-up call how these forced DRM clients suck and prevent me from playing games I've paid good money for on my PC. A bit like my old PS2 games would suddenly refuse to run on my genuine PS2 console, just because Sony suddenly decided so.

Overall though, XP did indeed make Windows 2000 obsolete (at least for home/office users), but Windows 2000 to me felt like a polished, early version of XP, with most of the benefits that XP offered over e.g. Windows 9x series (like NTFS and so on). And it was definitely better for Windows (also 9x) gaming than e.g. NT4 and such.


Can it be reused like that, by just removing it from the earlier PC? Windows 7 was preloaded on that PC (OEM?), so I always presumed it is tied (at least from a legal point of view, not sure if also technically) to that PC and that's it.

I later bought the cheap Windows 8 Pro upgrade on top of it, and it allowed me to install Windows 7 and 8 Pro side by side (and later 8 was upgraded to 8.1). Come to think of it, since the 8 was an upgrade license from 7, that probably complicates things further, ie. maybe I am not supposed to leave Windows 8 on that older PC either, in case I transfer the Windows 7 license to some other PC?

And frankly, since I was thinking of buying yet another ASUS machine, at least ASUS seems to have this habit of optimizing their newest PCs to the newest (current) Windows versions. E.g. I think many people who had Windows 8 preloaded on their ASUS machine, had major issues downgrading it to Windows 7. Just what I read though, don't know the specifics.

Yeah, that does invalidate my suggestion. Though the OEM licence may or may not be transferable via a phone call to MS telling them that the earlier machine no longer has any trace of the installation and licence (I know many who bought an OEM license for their home-built machines have transferred them that way, but cannot answer for factory-bundled ones).

Windows 2000 was quite good for gaming, I don't e.g. recall seeing a game that would run on XP, but not on Windows 2000. Well, not until Valve shut Steam down for Win2000 users...

It even had those backwards compatibility modes that people use extensively even today to get older Windows games to run (I think XP had more compatibility options, but Win2000 already had the important ones).

I wouldn't expect Windows 9 to dramatically break compatibility for gaming. Windows 8 compatibility was mostly comparable to Windows 7 despite all the changes it introduced (some of which do affect gaming); most of the differences that do exist can be fixed very easily (like a small percentage of games showing a window border when in fullscreen mode). GOG have updated many of their installers to handle Windows 8 differences.

Yeah I think so... but as I mentioned elsewhere, maybe Linux (+Wine) will actually become one way of running some older Windows games on systems where they refuse to run on newest Windows. So maybe install Linux beside Win8.1/9, maybe it helps somewhat in running some of the games. :)

I e.g. recall that the visual glitches I used to have with some Infinity Engine RPGs in Windows 7 didn't happen in Linux/Wine. Then again, NVidia seemed to fix those issues later also on Windows drivers.

How was Windows 95 bad? I recall people being disappointed that it wasn't technically as advanced as NT-core Windows releases (NTFS etc.), but IMHO it achieved what it was supposed to do quite well:

1. For PC gamers and home users, it introduced very much needed technologies that finally freed us from hardware dependency with sound cards (= decline of Creative Labs), 3D accelerators (= decline of 3Dfx as NVidia and ATI surpassed it technically, and they didn't have to try to be "3Dfx compatible"), and even joysticks and gamepads became more varied and versatile with DirectInput. And naturally it was the Windows that introduced internet to most homes, I think.

Sure Direct3D wasn't maybe that good in the beginning (for which reason id Software opted for OpenGL etc.), but it matured over time.

2. At the same time with all these new technologies, Win95 also offered very good backwards compatibility with DOS games. Many of them were actually easier to run straight from Win95 desktop than running them in real MS-DOS (e.g. some games which required lots of conventional memory, Win95 seemed to be able to offer e.g. hard drive cache and mouse support without consuming any conventional memory), and even for the most problematic DOS games, it offered a few different ways to boot to genuine MS-DOS mode.

And if some DOS game needed specific config.sys and autoexec.bat, it was easier to set them up, even for each DOS game separately if needed, than messing up with multiboot menus or boot disks in real MS-DOS.

Sure Win98(SE) was even better, matured version of it, but that doesn't IMHO make Win95 bad, and as far as I can tell Win95 was widely accepted by the home users (over staying in MS-DOS and Win3.x). Win9x was overall the much- needed bridge to bring people from DOS to Windows (including gaming), a bit like XP was important in bringing Windows home users to NT-core Windows versions.

Apparently MS felt Windows 8 would be a similar bridge to bring Windows 7 users from desktop/laptop PCs to tablets. :) I hope they fail, as this time they seem to want to kill the whole "legacy" PC market that has given them their position. If I have to go to tablets exclusively, Android it is, thanks. It even has DOSBox, and no forced one store for all apps.