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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#121

Post by barrkel »

linguae wrote: post #35
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…

Exactly. One of my annoyances with Microsoft's post-Windows 2000 design philosophy is its penchant for consuming large amounts of vertical space. This started with the large title bars used in the Windows XP Luna theme. I wasn't impressed with this "Fischer-Price" theme and always switched to the Windows Classic theme, which I continued to do even during the Windows 7 days. Next, Microsoft introduced the ribbon in Of…

Linux has been much worse for margins in UIs, FWIW.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#122

Post by thaeli »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #34
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…

Yes, they forgot to mention the fantastic, intuitive, and functional GUI rivaled by Mac OS 9, Nextstep, OS/2, BeOS etc. This era was the pinnacle. While we've been thrown a few bones like start menu search, most of the gratuitous changes have been for the worse. Sleeker but harder to use for professionals. Gnome 2 was approaching Win2k but then made a hard turn into tablet/novice land. XFCE is in the neighborhood but…

MacOS 7.1 was the pinnacle, imo. MacOS 9 had lots of the space-wasting pretty chrome we're decrying here in WinXP.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#124

Post by cyberjunkie »

Windows 2000 felt like a tank. You'd boot it thinking it was meant to run servers and web sites, but you could run it on your PC, and play games on it. It was robust. You could finally boast of high uptimes like the Linux folk!

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#126

Post by time0ut »

badRNG wrote: post #100
time0ut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be nostalgia talking, but those years felt like the end of a golden age. I went to university at 17 in 2001 with a Dell notebook and a self built Duron (IIRC) tower. Instead of partying, I used my new found freedom (and decent internet connection) to try every OS and piece of software I could get my hands on (though I never stumbled across BeOS). I spent the most time with Windows 2000 Server on the notebook…

It certainly feels like we currently live in a golden age of open source software and open access for tinkering. Linux desktops/laptops finally seem to work out of the box (as opposed to hunting for a WiFi driver to sneakernet over, or reinstalling the OS yet again due to some unidentifiable issue), gaming is finally viable on Linux, Microsoft has multiple compelling open source offerings like PowerShell (for Linux!)…

I spent a long time with Lubuntu as my go to. Things have certainly come a long way, but I was more than willing to put in the time tinkering to get things working.

The past couple years, I've been using Windows 10 with WSL2 for personal stuff. It is ok, but I think I'll go back to some Linux flavor once the mood strikes me.

All that said, I've been using OS X for work for a decade and it has gone down hill in the most depressing way...

As far as the golden age of open source? Some of my friends agree with you. Some think it ended as open source came to be dominated by big corporations. I actually think it is yet to come as the whole of humanity gains access and becomes involved. I guess time will tell.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#127

Post by dhosek »

This was the last version of Windows I used outside of work. I remember that it didn't support a lot of things I had hoped to do with my PC. A lot of "Windows" software either didn't run at all in Win2k or was unreliable in it. Games and multimedia software were especial offenders.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#128

Post by peterburkimsher »

Windows 2000 is still in use in a microSD factory in Taiwan!

It's being used by some pick & place machines and ovens. The machines are rented with a 30-year lease. Changing the software will void the warranty.

They're not connected to the Internet. My task was to parse the binary data to log machine usage and yield, and post that to a SQL database.

There's no .NET framework. I went back to Visual Studio 2005, and coded it all in C++. It was an interesting challenge! I was left with a good impression of how reliable Win2k is though, especially compared to newer OSes (even macOS > 10.9). I hope that some flavour of Linux will break into the mainstream this decade, probably taking cues from the Win2k/OS9 user experience.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#129

Post by zozbot234 »

jarjoura wrote: post #120

Call me cynical, but Win2k was probably developed by a small and tight-knit group of engineers, PMs and designers. It felt focused and ran most software well. I think if I remember correctly, Win2k was meant to replace the Windows 98/DOS kernel but they couldn't get it to work in time. That's when WinXP came out instead. WinXP felt like the result of a much bigger org. Am I correct to speculate that in Microsoft, the…

That's what Vista felt like too, compared to XP. And then it only got worse with Win 8+ and Win 10. Huge increases in bloat, for not much actual function.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#130

Post by drannex »

Wistar wrote: post #88
ogre_codes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. Windows 2000 was also one of the most consistently designed versions of Windows. XP also introduced tons of design language chaos as they only migrated some of the UI over to the new controls and left big chunks of the OS to languish. I think Control Panel had widget rot well into Windows 10 (Maybe still has this issue?). I only grudgingly moved to XP and shortly after switched to Desktop Linux full time. > I'm…

As someone once remarked "On XP everything looks as though it should go MOO! when you click on it."

That ia surprisingly succinct. I'll be copping this one for the future.
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