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Remembering Windows 2000

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Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#71

Post by mirekrusin »

RandomGuyDTB wrote: post #53

> Windows 2000 also served as an alternative to its successor, Windows XP, for several years. XP included some features that were controversial at the time. These included an Internet-based product activation system that complained if you changed your PC hardware, and a colorful new shell interface some derided as “Fisher-Price.” Did nobody ever change the theme back to Windows Classic? It was really simple to switch…

First thing I did after reinstall or if I was "fixing printer" or whatever in the family, then drop all crap from startup/registry, defrag, uninstall every toolbar/crapware that had uninstall. I always thought who is responsible for not giving to people system cleaned up like that? Mystery.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#72

Post by Avery3R »

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.

Yeah, windows has had 3 major flavors in its history. Win 1.x-3.x were just GUIs on top of DOS. Win9x was a true operating system with a kernel, but the kernel was still running on top of DOS. NT, what we have now, is a kernel that runs directly on the hardware. On 32-bit machines dos programs are run using a virtual machine

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#74

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

My favorite was always HmmXP's Mono Blue. There aren't many screenshots of it but it looks just like this subtheme: https://www.deviantart.com/fugacious/art/HmmXPnoC-10312376

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#75

Post by sergeykish »

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…

Screen space consumption was on the rise since Windows 1.0 days, there was a story recently [1]. Horizontal tiling mode become unusable [2] vs [3].

I think it traces transition from power users to casual. It makes sense, but there was no alternative. Screen become cluttered so much that most applications run on full screen only. And web become spoiled too - sticky headers everywhere (uBlock fixes this), wide content (media queries kicks in much narrower windows, Stylus to the rescue).

Explorer (shell) decorations is much to blame. Do we actually need task bar, title bar, menu bar, tool bar, status bar, scroll bar? I do not think so - plenty of space and distraction free [4]. There are a lot of tiling managers on Linux, but Windows has its share too. Like dwm port [5] (never tried on Windows) though I prefer wmii and xmonad with wmii layout.

[1] Windows Explorer Through the Years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23487698

[2] Windows 1.0 tiling https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Microsof...

[3] Windows 10 tiling https://i2.wp.com/www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2...

[4] No decorations http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png

[5] DWM on Windows https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dwm-win32/

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#76

Post by erichurkman »

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…

Windows XP even before SP2 was a _delight_ compared to the true train wreck that shipped on consumer PCs before it: Windows "Mistake Edition" Me.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#77

Post by jhoechtl »

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…

All true. But please do not forget the startup times which was almost an eternity to boot up. In a time without SSDs and no prefetch cache.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#78

Post by ben174 »

derefr wrote: post #47
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…

There's no real way to translate the classic theme "as designed" to hi-DPI systems, AFAIK; let alone to allow it to freely morph between desktop and tablet interaction paradigms when you dock/undock a two-in-one. You could in theory design a modern UI that resembles the classic UI, but it wouldn't really be "the classic UI". A large part of what makes the classic UI have the particular look it does is that it has cus…

> You could in theory design a modern UI that resembles the classic UI, but it wouldn't really be "the classic UI".

I bet this would look awesome. Especially in high DPI.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#79

Post by ndespres »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #46
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 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.

Re: Remembering Windows 2000

#80

Post by noir_lord »

bluedino wrote: post #30
noir_lord wrote: post #15

Win 2000 was a revolution for me, back then I was a heavy delphi user and it's debugger crashing would kill Win98, like straight BOOM gone. Win 2000 just shook it off and kept going, that alone was worth the upgrade.

We had twice-daily reboots for anyone in our marketing department that worked with Photoshop or Quark. After upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, all the problems were solved and I looked like a hero.

David Cutler is a Man of Focus, Commitment and Sheer Fucking Will - the bodies of microsoft operating systems he buried that day are the foundations of what they are today.
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