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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#101

Post by hyperman1 »

bluedino wrote: post #29
mschaef wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's best OS of all time was Windows 2000. Imho, Snow Leopard was Apple's best. Windows 2000 was very good, but I'm also fond of Windows for Workgroups 3.11. It had a certain simplicity and directness that they lost in the move to Windows 95. (And WfWG could run both 32-bit drivers and 32-bit software, as long as Win32s was installed.)

Not all Win32 software ran on Win32s, as Win32s didn't support things like memory protection and multithreading, right?

Correct. win32s was mostly a shim layer that let you access 32 bit registers and the win32 API. But the actual OS was still the 16 bit windows/dos hybrid

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#102

Post by marcosdumay »

airstrike wrote: post #36
amiga-workbench wrote: post #17

Windows 2000 also represents the zenith of UI design for Microsoft software. I'm still rather baffled about how people look back fondly on XP, it looked like a toy for toddlers, and installing the Zune theme was the first thing I did after a fresh install to try and tone it down. The in-your-face over decoration of UI's thankfully hasn't persisted, but instead we're seeing a similar kind of decadence among our suppos…

> I'm still rather baffled about how people look back fondly on XP, it looked like a toy for toddlers Agreed, yet somehow its Start menu is still better than what you get on Windows 10 these days: https://i.stack.imgur.com/rwZqf.jpg > ...installing the Zune theme was the first thing I did after a fresh install to try and tone it down. Everyone knows the best XP theme was Royale Noir! https://www.istartedsomething.com…

That's beating a dead horse. Anything is better than the Windows 10 start menu, with the only exception of the Windows 8 (and a Server version, don't remember what) (lack of) one...

Or, maybe the Win8 one was better. It's a bit hard to be sure about this, but the first half of the comment stands.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#103

Post by gruez »

tomc1985 wrote: post #87
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that they got rid of it in windows 8 and later. >the classic theme was a lot leaner on system resources maybe , but it probably also made things run slower because it forces everything to be done in software rather than hardware. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130327-00/?p=48... >Starting in Windows Vista, a lot of visual effects were offloaded to the graphics card. Consequently, the impact on…

What's really sad is the classic widgets are still there -- you can see them occasionally in Win10 when the compositor glitches out. Weirder, MDI windows use Win7's classic\b\b\b\b\b\b aero basic styling, so apparently some of the Win7 styling is also still available. Another major annoyance: the resize area for a window is seemingly 1 pixel wide. You used to be able to specify a width and all windows would be border…

> What's really sad is the classic widgets are still there -- you can see them occasionally in Win10 when the compositor glitches out.

I wouldn't call them "classic". They're closer to the "aero basic" theme from vista/7 than the "classic" theme that was available from windows xp to windows 7.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#104

Post by zozbot234 »

nix23 wrote: post #96
MisterTea wrote: post #90

People tend to forget this was during a period when computers were computers and actual work was done on them. Now they're over powered terminals.

But you need lots of power to run a browser nowadays. Love the expression 'over powered terminals' that's sooo true!

> But you need lots of power to run a browser nowadays.

Quite right; the vast majority of "actual work" that one would do locally on the machine, requires a lot less power than booting up a web browser and surfing to a random "modern" website. Funny how that works.

We're all forgetting about the 'real' work that we routinely do on our computers, because that kind of thing has gotten so rock-solid and doesn't even measurably tax compute resources - even as browsing the web, of all things, has only become increasingly fiddly and heavy on our systems.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#105

Post by nix23 »

Yes i have to say i pirated W2k, WinME (preinstalled) was unbearable, i put my money away for one year to buy a nice Desktop, and Windows ME just made me sad, nothing worked, i just had no additional 300$ to buy Win2000pro...i was so mad about Microsoft, i called them to ask for a exchange from WinME to W2K..cost still 300$ thanks Microsoft.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#106

Post by nix23 »

ndespres wrote: post #79
EvanAnderson wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the Windows 2000 UI being great, but Windows XP ran better for me. To get the best of both worlds I ran a spare copy of Windows Server 2003 as my "daily driver" on a Thinkpad back in the early 2000's. It had the Windows 2000 UI with the behind-the-scenes updates that came with Windows XP. Most software that installed on XP installed fine on Server 2003. It was nice.

I also ran Windows Server 2003 as my regular desktop OS for a few years. I got an evaluation copy in the mail at some point and just kept using it. Even with the extra overhead of running network services on it for my household, it was still more performant than Windows XP on that same computer.

Hahah me too, problem was that no Antivirus worked because you needed the Antivirus-Server-version.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#107

Post by tomc1985 »

gruez wrote: post #103
tomc1985 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really sad is the classic widgets are still there -- you can see them occasionally in Win10 when the compositor glitches out. Weirder, MDI windows use Win7's classic\b\b\b\b\b\b aero basic styling, so apparently some of the Win7 styling is also still available. Another major annoyance: the resize area for a window is seemingly 1 pixel wide. You used to be able to specify a width and all windows would be border…

> What's really sad is the classic widgets are still there -- you can see them occasionally in Win10 when the compositor glitches out. I wouldn't call them "classic". They're closer to the "aero basic" theme from vista/7 than the "classic" theme that was available from windows xp to windows 7.

You're right. And it was definitely aero basic.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#108

Post by sergeykish »

vzidex wrote: post #94
sergeykish wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is full of distractions, one time I thought my display was broken - transparency on title bar. And animations just add latency. Disable transparency and windows animations (Settings > Display > Show transparency on Windows, Show animations in windows). Also disable "Fade or slide menus into view". Much better experience and not much to offload.

I just went through my settings on my work machine and: * Disabled transparency * Disabled animations * Disabled scroll-bars being auto-hidden Unfortunately, I couldn't find "Fade or slide menus into view", but the rest of the settings are night and day! Thank you.

You are welcome! I would not find myself:

* My Computer

* Right click

* Properties

* System properties

* Advanced

* Performance

* Settings

* Uncheck "Fade or slide menus into view"

* Apply / OK

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#109

Post by gpvos »

bad_op3rator wrote: post #38
rbinv wrote: post #23

Windows 2000 was great and really reduced bluescreen frequency compared to Windows 95 and 98.

It was mainly because Win2k was basically the next version of WinNT which had nothing in common with Win95/98 under the hood.

2000 was also more stable than NT 3.51 and NT4.

XP was a bit more stable again, but also contained more cruft.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#110

Post by vezycash »

barking wrote: post #61
zozbot234 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XP introduced a "new" control panel arrangement by default, but you could easily revert to a simple folder view. Windows 10 is a mess today because of the overlap between the classic Control Panel and the new settings app, but there was nothing like this back then.

One of the first things I do is to pin the control panel and a couple of its icons to start so I can avoid the settings way of getting there.

appwiz.cpl run this from RUN or command prompt
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