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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#171

Post by ajtjp »

ubercow13 wrote: post #55
proverbialbunny wrote: post #3

Microsoft's best OS of all time was Windows 2000. Imho, Snow Leopard was Apple's best. There is something nice about a bug free operating system that "just works" as intended. No problems, no hassles. No load times, even back then. Back then it was common to have a computer with 128MB+ of ram but Windows 2000 ran on 64MB of that, so it was the first non page file heavy OS that just snapped. In comparison, a year late…

No load times?! I seem to remember Win 95-XP era involved almost comically long boot times especially if you waited for your hard drive to stop churning after getting to the desktop, but maybe I am misremembering. It wasn't so much the OS's fault, though.

It depends on if you're talking boot times, or program loading times. I agree, every computer I had until 2007 had terrible boot times.

But I've compared how long it takes to start Word on my Pentium II 450 MHz running Windows 98, with Word 2000, to my Core i5 2500 K (3.3 GHz) running Windows 8.1, with Word 2010. The Pentium II wins.

I don't how much of the difference was Windows versus Office, but it's a sad indication of the slowdown in software outpacing the speedup in hardware.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#172

Post by ajtjp »

smcl wrote: post #58
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why so many people complain about it when it was trivial to enable a classic theme to make it look like Win2K.

I did the same but I recall there was a few elements that remained - the windows logo on the start menu was a bit colourful, and a few other bits couldn’t be changed too

The Windows logo in the Start menu was a bit colorful in Windows 95 and NT 4.0 as well. I'll grant you that the logo itself is slightly different in XP, but it had been colorful for years by that point.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#173

Post by sillywalk »

elwes5 wrote: post #84
linguae wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree on the vertical space thing. I would add that lack of contrast between controls is very annoying. That 'flat' look is a pain. Can I or can I not click on this? The one that is a real pain is the disappearing scroll bar. It is there. The space for it is used. But just gone until you hover over it. Then it is clunky to use in relation to all of the other windows controls. The rules for making a GUI were dead si…

THIS.

I still have to think when I look at the control center on my phone, uh.. moon == Do not disturb, and is it on or not?? The faux-3d let you know. I also wish there was text under the controls.

I've resorted to turning on some of the contrast accessibility stuff to make it a little more usable.

And don't even get me started on the hamburger menu.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#174

Post by Miraste »

elwes5 wrote: post #84
linguae wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree on the vertical space thing. I would add that lack of contrast between controls is very annoying. That 'flat' look is a pain. Can I or can I not click on this? The one that is a real pain is the disappearing scroll bar. It is there. The space for it is used. But just gone until you hover over it. Then it is clunky to use in relation to all of the other windows controls. The rules for making a GUI were dead si…

I must use scrolling windows differently than you, because I haven't clicked and dragged a scroll bar probably for years. The only thing I need a scroll indicator for is to see how far I am down the page, which I only do when I'm actively scrolling. MacOS disappearing scrollbars (which do not waste space when inactive, but pop in over content when you scroll) are my ideal implementation.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#175

Post by wyclif »

TheRealSteel wrote: post #42
2bitencryption wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, just thinking of Snow Leopard makes me swoon... I don't know if the rose-tinted glasses are too strong, or if that OS was really as snappy, simple, and polished as I remember.

I'm almost certain that Snow Leopard woke up from sleep on a 2010 Macbook Pro faster than Mojave wakes up on a 2019, but I don't have proof. It was definitely more reliable.

I learned Python on a white MacBook running Snow Leopard. Those were the days. I don't remember a single instance where it crashed. Super reliable.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#176

Post by ajtjp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #140
zozbot234 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mea…

Problem is, the actual work we used to do locally and now do over webapps has to pay the performance price of browsing the web - resulting in severe UX degradation for anything but the most casual of uses.

It's partially modern web frameworks, too. I happened to load up the web version of Slack on a Core 2 Duo running at 2.2 GHz today, and it was unusable. By comparison, I remember using AIM via Meebo (remember that site?) on dial-up back in the late 2000's, on a Pentium 166 MHz laptop. It wasn't exactly snappy, but it was better than Slack was today on a 2 GHz laptop with 500 times the bandwidth and a fraction of the latency.

It probably would have been even better if I'd been using a native AIM client instead of Meebo, but I'm amazed by how inefficient some modern websites are.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#177

Post by ogre_codes »

ajtjp wrote: post #161
ogre_codes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> XP introduced a "new" control panel arrangement by default, but you could easily revert to a simple folder view. It's been 15+ years? since I regularly used Windows so maybe I'm mis-remembering this, but I definitely remember there being quite a few WTF moments working with the Windows XP Control Panel. Lots of changes for no apparent reason, and many weird/ jarring things. Its definitely not a Windows 10 thing bec…

The proper thing to do in the Windows XP control panel is to switch it to Classic View. No more trying to figure out what category something is in and being wrong half the time, just the same options as you had in Windows 98, plus a few new ones. Even in Classic View, there are admittedly some items that have user interface styles that date back to Windows 3.1 (one example being part of the Fonts area), so there are…

I believe what you suggest is exactly what I did when I used XP, but at this point, the only proper thing is to not use XP unless you are doing some kind of air-gapped retro setup.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#180

Post by whalesalad »

2bitencryption wrote: post #6
proverbialbunny wrote: post #3

Microsoft's best OS of all time was Windows 2000. Imho, Snow Leopard was Apple's best. There is something nice about a bug free operating system that "just works" as intended. No problems, no hassles. No load times, even back then. Back then it was common to have a computer with 128MB+ of ram but Windows 2000 ran on 64MB of that, so it was the first non page file heavy OS that just snapped. In comparison, a year late…

ah, just thinking of Snow Leopard makes me swoon... I don't know if the rose-tinted glasses are too strong, or if that OS was really as snappy, simple, and polished as I remember.

Snow Leopard was an entire release dedicated to making Leopard faster and more stable ... so at first glance it makes sense your memory of it is so positive.
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