Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remembering Windows 2000

howtogeek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 243 posts

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#201

Post by freeflight »

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…

Tho that only helps with certain things, depending on localization.

For example, the German version of Windows XP renamed the entry for "Software" to "Programme und Funktionen"/"Programs and functions".

It's something that even over a decade later keeps catching me off-guard because for the longest time I was so used to look for "S like software".

And Windows 10 did it again with the whole "App" thing where I'm still somewhat confused if that's the new name for software, or if I'm installing some kind of integrated gadget from the Windows store or what the actual difference between these two is supposed to be.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#202

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kccqzy wrote: post #131
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…

Windows 2000 always reminded me of brutalist architecture. It was efficient, functional, and worked well, but it wasn't pretty at all. This is probably a very unpopular opinion but I rather liked Windows Vista's design. It was still very compact compared with later designs, and it had a certain charm from its prevalent use of translucency. I disliked XP for the same reason you cited, and upgraded to Vista almost as s…

You could always revert XP to classic mode. That's what I do for Win7 VMs to cut down on resource requirements.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#203

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ajtjp wrote: post #166
zozbot234 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no real way to translate the classic theme "as designed" to hi-DPI systems, AFAIK The classic theme supports arbitrary sizes (in px or "device-independent" units) for both text and widgets, which addresses HiDPI and touch readiness. What it might have trouble with however is mixed DPI, where moving a window across two screens requires rendering it with different pixel densities. But that was not on the hori…

Indeed, and there also is a DPI scaling option at least as early as Windows 98, on top of the text/widget size configuration. I've used it on a 1200p monitor connected to a Windows 98 box, and it works. It doesn't always produce the most beautiful results, but it's serviceable. And to be fair, it's taken a long time for high-DPI to consistently look beautiful even on recent versions of Windows. I shudder to remember…

It was first available in Win95 Plus pack. Or you could use TweakUI.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#204

Post by heelix »

octorian wrote: post #64
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 I think a big part of this is a combination of two factors: First, most non-tech people never ran Win2k. They went straight from 98/ME to XP. Second, no one remembers WinXP before SP2. (You know, when it was a complete trainwreck.) FWIW, when I was doing software development in the latter days of XP, I found that I a…

XP64, if you had hardware that had drivers, was amazing. Drop it into classic mode and you essentially had a workstation (Ala Windows) version of Server 2003.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#205

Post by stevenicr »

Would still use win2k today as far as UI and such is concerned.

Still remember the day my last w2k machine booted - an ex was on myspace and just had to have the added benefits of 'zwinky' - foggy memory, but I think it was some kind of cartoon emoji thing you could use around myspace - well it apparently came with crapware installer that also loaded some malware that killed the machine on the next upgrade.

what a terrible way to lose my favorite machine at the time.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#206

Post by snarfy »

ogre_codes wrote: post #43
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. 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…

We have three layers of it now.

Control Panel: win 3.0 lineage

Computer Management/device manager: WinNT lineage

Settings: Win8 lineage

It's all a big mess. You want to configure your audio settings or printer? You'll find options in all three areas, all with slightly different UI controls.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#207

Post by zlynx »

outworlder wrote: post #66

Windows 2000, like many 'server' Windows OS, took FOREVER AND EVER to boot up. It could have been more popular on desktop-class machines if it wasn't due to that.

It was ridiculously fast on RAID-0 15k SCSI drives.

Disk speed has been holding back computing for 25 years.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#209

Post by u801e »

stevenicr wrote: post #205

Would still use win2k today as far as UI and such is concerned. Still remember the day my last w2k machine booted - an ex was on myspace and just had to have the added benefits of 'zwinky' - foggy memory, but I think it was some kind of cartoon emoji thing you could use around myspace - well it apparently came with crapware installer that also loaded some malware that killed the machine on the next upgrade. what a te…

I had a desktop with Win2k installed on it from 2002 through 2010. My account was a regular user account and I only logged into the Administrator account if I needed to install or upgrade.

I actually lost the installation due to a lightning strike that damaged the system board. The surge protector wasn't enough it seems.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#210

Post by jcfields »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #44
ianlevesque wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Fisher Price colored theme though...

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

It was also commonplace to use the UXTheme patcher to enable third-party custom window themes. I used the Watercolor theme, which was modeled after the Whistler beta builds before they (bafflingly) switched it out for Luna.

I have a soft spot for Windows 2000 because I was very impressed with it when it first came out (coming from Win9x), but there wasn't much point to using it over XP after XP came out. Windows XP is just an improved version of 2000, and it was updated for much longer. Windows 2000 doesn't even support wi-fi without third-party utilities.

Post reply on HN