[PCWorld]

Post your comments for The 10 Worst Operating Systems of All Time here

[bmogo]

You forgot Microsoft's BOB.

[Islandjon]

I remember using MS DOS 3.3 and everything being ok. But the big overpowering selling point of 4.0 was its disk compression utility that promised to increase my 20MB hard disk space. Buying hard drives was rather expensive in those days and 4.0 seemed like the answer to a prayer. But the system was a nightmare and rendered my computer useless. I will say that MS released version 4.1 rather quickly and I was up and running again.

[Cybershepherd]

I disagree. Windows ME beat Windows 98 hands down. It was better at recognizing plug and play devices. I have Windows XP and Vista on 2 machines at home. I still can't see why folks complain about Vista.

[dfschmid]

Hi Steven.

What ever happened to BEOS?

Oh, how about OS/2? In the 1990's, I seem to recall a PC World article comparing OS's and it mentioned that in OS/2, one could actually delete the operating system by dragging and dropping the system folder it into the Shredder (the trash can). Also, how about the lack of software and drivers written for OS/2?

Cheers.

[Beavis123456]

Um, bmogo, Microsoft's BOB wasn't an OS in the first place...

[pcwluhn]

One correction: The first version of Windows was actualy 1.04. I know....I had to review the turkey for PCW, way back when. It did have the File Manager and...a very nice screen saver demo of tropical fish. That was it.

Another correction: strictly speaking, Windows 1.x, etc, up to Windows 3.xxxx were operating "environments", not true OSes. They all required DOS. (BOB was an environment for an environment...a truly silly idea.)

My vote for the worst worst worst OS of all time: Windows ME. Slow, buggy, slow, buggy. did I mention buggy? I immediately reverted my "new" system at the time to Windows 98.

The best OS--at least of the Microsoft clan--Windows 2000. Rock solid, reliable, fairly bug free. What a shock!

--Robert Luhn

[msmith1375]

I worked with OS2 Warp in the mid 90's. That OS was trash.

[kitsune17717]

dang, I loved the days of windows 2000. It was so stable and didn't have that bloat characteristic of XP and (mostly) Vista.
Windows ME would probably on top of my OS failures. It sucked ballz. I think I know how Microsoft works....for each new operating system, they keep on adding bloatware to the previous version until they realize that it's completely unusable. Windows 3.1 was amazing (for its time)....then out came windows 95 (slightly crappy), then windows 98 (very crappy), and ME (extremely crappy). To replace that, windows came out with windows NT (which sort of later became 2000), then XP (still acceptable) and then Vista (nuff said).
I'm not a software programmer but I still think that this is NOT the way to make software.

[GetReal]

I think the scale is slightly reversed---Windows 95 is the only OS that ever caused me to seriously wish physical harm to it's creators! Totally rotten to the core. Next on the list (as slight improvement to 95) would be obviously Windows-98se, followed by ME, both of which ran moderately Ok for me, producing a DSOD only at a rate of about 2 per week. My point being that neither of the 3 should have ever have seen the light of day AND I am a firm believer that the DOJ should require MS to refund completely the purchass price, tax, interest plus a $300 irritation element for each and every copy of these 3 OS that was sold, world-wide. hah!



:x Oh what a thrill and pleasure to use Windows-2000 after experiencing all previous MS efforts. :x



And by-the-way, noting that Win 3.xxx and previous were separate animals from later versions because they were an "overlay" on DOS is an idea something similar to "the-world-is-flat" in that every consumer version of Windows I have seen "lives" and "operates" at core level from the system hard disk or equivalent storage device, making them a variation of a DOS based OS! The current versions do not load a DOS at boot but DO load a functionally-equivalent series of files and do require a HD or writable storage, so, call it by whatever name MS has indicated >>> it is still a variant of DOS, (and before the reader attack occurs, I am aware that Windows can be run from thumb-drives, DVD's, network, etc., but that doesn't change the construction of the OS, its just changes in the way people are programmed to think about it).

[Bubby4j]

Lets see, I hame Windows Vista and I HATE it! If only I could switch back now...

[puterdood]

I once had a Gateway 2000 tech tell me Windows ME was an upgrade to Windows 2000. I started to ask him how long he had been a technician and how long he intended to be one feeding people garbage like that. Then again, he was a Gateway tech.

I believe Micro$oft has to come up with a "New Coke" every so many years. For example, Windows 3.1 was good - Win95 sucked, Win98 & W2K were ok - Win ME sucked, WXP has been great - Vista's terribleness can't be described using words alone. Maybe Win7 will redeem M$ again?

A lot of people bash Micro$oft. But they do have some very good software and operating systems, such as Win3.1, WXP, Office titles, etc. They just make some boneheaded decisions sometimes - W95, WME, Vista, Ballmer, for example...

[byl01]

Would it beat Win 98 SE? I don't think so. The first release of Win 98 was almost as much of a dog as ME, but the second edition was very good, especially if you consider hardware requirements. It could run just fine on a 300-MHz Celeron with 256MB of RAM. When it was discontinued, I saw quite a few comments like, "There goes the best upgrade for XP users".

[johnwalterman]

Am I suprised that you put Windows Vista as the absolute worst OS ever? NO WAY!

Am I disgusted? Yes. Windows Vista is NOT a bad Operating System.

Sure if you try to run it on an old computer, you are going to have some issues. But if you meet it's recomended requirements (including graphics wise if you want Aero), you get a nice clean and sleek operating system.

[DOUGLAS666]

Everyone still trashes Vista, but it's really not that bad now. I bought it early 2007 and was very frustrated with it at first. Two years later they resolved many of the original issues. I was more frustrated with Dell trying to bull shit me with a brand new computer with Vista on an XPS-410. Dell had many techs that were dishonest or ignorant about their jobs. I still would not want to own Vista if I had an under rated machine. Vista needs a strong processor and at least two gigs of decent ram as a minimum. I run my system with a
Q-6700 quad processor and four gigs of 1066 Ram along with an 8800GTX graphic card. Vista SP1 with the power I have run decently, but I can see how folks with basic machines would have a real headache trying to operate Vista. Not very fair to a family on a limited budget. Microsoft takes from the poor and gives to the rich "MICRO$OFT"

[zboner]

I agree with your list, except Vista is not all that bad, I mean yeah when it first came out, it was slow. But I have noticed a vast improvement since its been out. I upgraded from xp to vista. Vista on my computer runs very very well now. 1.5 gigs of ram, 2.10 ghz processor nvidia geforce fx 5200, not at all the best computer, but it still runs vista very well. not enough to run aero but i could care less about that.
I also still have xp on another machine, 2000 on another machine, and i also have an apple laptop.
btw, the machine with vista can also run the windows 7 beta very very well, way way faster then Vista.

[talhamid]

I have had Vista for about two years now. Not a single BSOD, not a single freeze. And I dual-boot on it, I have played both versions of Crysis. I play racing games on it while WMP plays songs in background, while there is a 400 MB download going on, while my Gmail account is open in Chrome, while my Nokia phone is synching with Outlook, while an external hard disk is getting backup from the internal one, all the while being signed in to MSN Messenger. And that's just a typical day.
Does anyone notice how good a multitasker Vista is? It is slow to boot up and come to its senses, but afterwards handles everything thrown at it pretty well. But most 'tech journalists' simply don't care to work past that point to see what the OS is really like, preferring to type away 'Vista SUXXXXOOOORRRRRRSSS' on their sleek Apple laptops as if they are prophets.
I am not saying Vista has not caused people problems. I am just saying they have been blown way out of proportion.

[talhamid]

And hey, I run Vista on a Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.8 GHz), with 2 GB of RAM and an old-ish NVidia 8800 GTS. That makes every component on my PC essentially two years old at least. I agree that way back when Vista required a hefty machine, but for me at least, it has paid back every penny over two years.

[izzledizzle]

Ok, vista is not THAT bad that it should be #1. I had it right when it came out on a cheap 4 yr old dell inspiron 1150 and I admit, it was pretty buggy until SP1 came out, but ever since then it has worked almost flawlessy until the screen broke on it. I then bought an outdated $400 sony vaio that was on sale from Best Buy that came with vista and it has worked flawlessly, even while dual booting vista with cough pirated builds of windows 7. I'll be glad when windows 7 becomes popular so I can stop hearing people tear apart an OS that to be honest is better than the darling XP in almost every way

[JimH443]

Quote

GetReal wrote:

>I think the scale is slightly reversed---Windows 95 is the only OS that ever caused me to seriously wish physical harm to it's creators!

Oh yes, I agree completely. Windows 95 was a complete nightmare. I remember a joke that was going around at the time. It was a long list of all the problems one would face while using Win95, and that the only way to fix them was to reinstall the OS.

I couldn't find a link to it (it's funny how many Google search results come up when you search for "reinstalling windows"). I did, however, find a link to comedic recording: www.last.fm/music/Les[iBarker/_/Reinstalling[/i]Windows-Les+Barker] It's different than the one I read, but it has the same overtone.