Will Windows good/bad OS history repeat itself with Windows 8?

[Ultrabook]

I can't remember the exact order of Windows OP systems but I DO remember that it switches off good/bad each time. Windows 7 is way better than vista so will Windows 8 follow suit and be the "bad" one? I know we can upgrade for $40 but not sure I want to do it...

 

[dagamer34]

So because there is a pattern, Windows 8 will/should be bad? *shakes head*

Also, your theory is incorrect, as people always seem to skip Windows 2000 between Me and XP. And to classify XP as "good" means you have a revisionist history in terms of how insecure that operating system was (RTM shipped with the firewall turned OFF), OS security was so bad that Longhorn development stopped for a year to create Windows XP SP2. How do people remember that as "good"???

 

[tommo123]

yep, and win2k was better than win ME and 98. Also vista was better than XP IMO. i didn't try to run it on anaemic hardware so it ran well for me.

still think win8 will bomb though but for another reason

 

[arod]

I expect it will "fail" similar to vista but vista still sold 350 million copies.... that's about what I expect from win8 which will still be considered a success by any other company.

There is some truth to the bad/good cycle in windows.... ms actually does this on purpose imo and are doing it again with 8. They know many people are just now getting 7 and will not be upgrading for a few years. They use these "bad" releases to make important foundation upgrades that will make life better in the long run. Vista brought us the new driver and security model (and made 7 possible because of that). I see the same thing happening again with win9 with the foundation being laid in 8 of winRT/metro. They will also leverage this cycle to get new hardware out there designed for metro.

 

[dagamer34]

I expect it will "fail" similar to vista but vista still sold 350 million copies.... that's about what I expect from win8 which will still be considered a success by any other company.

There is some truth to the bad/good cycle in windows.... ms actually does this on purpose imo and are doing it again with 8. They know many people are just now getting 7 and will not be upgrading for a few years. They use these "bad" releases to make important foundation upgrades that will make life better in the long run. Vista brought us the new driver and security model (and made 7 possible because of that). I see the same thing happening again with win9 with the foundation being laid in 8 of winRT/metro.

"Bad/good" is no different from "good/better", the only thing that's changed is your frame of reference. For example, Intel has tick/tock, Sandy Bridge was such a huge upgrade compared to Nehalem that a lot of people upgraded, but would anyone at AnandTech really recommend dumping a Sandy Bridge system for Ivy Bridge? Probably not. That's certainly how it is in business, as there are very few places that will upgrade to every new version of Windows no matter how good it is.

 

[ViRGE]

The pattern will probably repeat itself, but not in the same way as before.

Win8 is technically superior in practically every respect. Since it's a further iteration of the Win 6.x kernel there aren't any significant technical issues being introduced, and at the same time they've introduced further optimizations that improve performance in most situations. So it won't be like Vista or WinME where users suffer through a "bloated" OS.

What's going to get Win8 is Metro. If it fails at the consumer level it's because users will reject it due to Metro, which is in stark contrast to the reasons previous consumer OSes were rejected.

 

[JimmiG]

I wouldn't say the pattern is as obvious, but the quality of Microsoft's OS releases does tend to vary.

Windows 95 wasn't very good, but that's partially because it was completely new tech and the computers at the time were underpowered (16+ MB of RAM was ideal, many had 8MB or even 4MB). Windows 98 and 98SE improved on the OS while at the same time, computers got more powerful.

I'm one of the 6 people on earth who actually liked WinME. It was basically Windows 98SE with a better GUI (similar to Windows 2000). It was no worse than Win98SE in terms of stability on my systems at the time. It was an easy way to get a lot of UI improvements without the driver and performance issues if Win2k.

XP wasn't that great in the beginning. Just like Win95, it required more RAM than most PCs had at the time. Where I worked at the time, XP machines came with 128MB of RAM. You could only really run one program at a time before everything slowed to a crawl. Enthusiasts hated the "fisher price" Luna theme and found it insulting to their intelligence. Kind of ironic when you compare it to Metro...

The only reason XP is considered so good today is because it survived for so long. Microsoft was simply forced to improve it all the time. Hook up a WinXP RTM machine to the Internet and it will be infected with malware within minutes, no kidding.

The pattern will probably repeat itself, but not in the same way as before.

Win8 is technically superior in practically every respect. Since it's a further iteration of the Win 6.x kernel there aren't any significant technical issues being introduced, and at the same time they've introduced further optimizations that improve performance in most situations. So it won't be like Vista or WinME where users suffer through a "bloated" OS.

What's going to get Win8 is Metro. If it fails at the consumer level it's because users will reject it due to Metro, which is in stark contrast to the reasons previous consumer OSes were rejected.

I'll probably get Win8 for the technical improvements. However I'll most certainly get some kind of start menu replacement since I won't be running it on a tablet and don't want to use a tablet UI for anything.

 

[Pretty Cool]

To me, it does not make sense to reject 8 due to the UI. Reason is that others will offer a reasonable replacement for the feature that everybody is concerned about: the Start Menu. So if you only use desktop applications in desktop mode & are able to duplicate the Start Menu, there should be an almost zero learning curve as compared to your previous version of Windows. I like Classic Shell, but there are others.

Personally I would look at the final release to see if 8 is slow because of Metro, is unstable, or breaks things that work in 7. If anything of these are true, then I would say that 8 is not yet worth using.

 

[ViRGE]

I'll probably get Win8 for the technical improvements. However I'll most certainly get some kind of start menu replacement since I won't be running it on a tablet and don't want to use a tablet UI for anything.

I've had the same thought. But Microsoft is doing their damnedest to stop that, so it may not be possible/practical.

 

[Continuity28]

To me, it does not make sense to reject 8 due to the UI. Reason is that others will offer a reasonable replacement for the feature that everybody is concerned about: the Start Menu. So if you only use desktop applications in desktop mode & are able to duplicate the Start Menu, there should be an almost zero learning curve as compared to your previous version of Windows. I like Classic Shell, but there are others.

Personally I would look at the final release to see if 8 is slow because of Metro, is unstable, or breaks things that work in 7. If anything of these are true, then I would say that 8 is not yet worth using.

The UI itself is not really a deal breaker to me either, but I have concerns regarding Metro as a whole, because its not just a difference in UI. The philosophy behind it (designed for compatibility with tablet devices) prevents multitasking and breaks compatibility with existing software. Windows 8 comes with the "legacy desktop environment" in addition to the Metro environment in order to maintain compatibility, but what if Windows 9 removed the "legacy environment", leaving only Metro? Would people be okay with that? I sure wouldn't be. In this case, what Microsoft deems as "legacy" is far more capable than it's replacement (Metro).

Currently, Windows 8 is unusable for me because of it's extreme DPC latency, most likely stemming from under-the-hood changes regarding power efficiency. Important for a device powered by battery, but really bad for performance. In games and video, many frames are being dropped leading to micro-stutter because of this latency. I really hope they will adjust that or let me modify their power efficiency settings after the OS is finalized.

Win8 is technically superior in practically every respect.

Hopefully it will end up that way, but right now, it's far worse in terms of performance in any real-time task. Personally, I don't care if my files unzip faster if it means I can't even play 24FPS video without high latency micro-stutter. I'm sure a lot of people won't notice, just like some can't seem to notice screen-tearing, but for me it was unbearable. Video games were the same way... high FPS, but artificially so. It PLAYED far worse than any other OS I've tried, numbers be damned. (Frame latency matters more than total frames rendered)

 

[JackMDS]

If we are talking Technology it seems that Win 8 is a very good OS, almost every thing Win 7 + new slick stuff.

That said, if you are taking in term of Human behavior (Not objective reality), everything is possible.

Remember you are talking about a species that for few centuries adored Mercury as the prime Magic Medication. Hundreds of thousands died from using it, but it did not cross the period's main stream mind that it might be a very potent Poison.

 

[ninaholic37]

Windows 95 wasn't very good, but that's partially because it was completely new tech and the computers at the time were underpowered (16+ MB of RAM was ideal, many had 8MB or even 4MB). Windows 98 and 98SE improved on the OS while at the same time, computers got more powerful.

I'm one of the 6 people on earth who actually liked WinME. It was basically Windows 98SE with a better GUI (similar to Windows 2000). It was no worse than Win98SE in terms of stability on my systems at the time. It was an easy way to get a lot of UI improvements without the driver and performance issues if Win2k.

Interesting. Similar to your WinME experience... I actually liked Win95, the GUI felt very easy and clean to me, and I had less problems in it than with Win98 (can't remember any problems on my Win95 machine actually, it's still on my 486 laptop). What are the most common problems people had with it, and what people liked better about Win98 than Win95?

 

[HeXen]

funny thing is. Vista didn't really fail. just appears that way in enthusiast media because they failed to realize that it wasn't so much the OS itself, it was the drivers and older apps incompatibility.
W7 is a tweaked Vista with a few added features. It was more successful and thus over shadows Vista's success.

Another way to look at it, if Vista's marketshare was a failure, what did that make OSX and Linux? Vista btw, had 7% within a year. OSX had 5% in that time and linux less than 1%.
As of August 2011. Vista had 8.65%. June 2012, just 6.10%. still way higher than Linux's share of the consumer desktop and laptop market. So Linux must have uber zomfg failed.

 

[gmaster456]

Good/Bad is personal opinion. I really didn't mind vista at all and I'd consider upgrading to windows 8 if MS wasn't removing aero. And to be completely honest, I'm incredibly happy with Windows 7 and I have no real technical reason to upgrade until the software I use demands it.

 

[HeXen]

Good/Bad is personal opinion. I really didn't mind vista at all and I'd consider upgrading to windows 8 if MS wasn't removing aero. And to be completely honest, I'm incredibly happy with Windows 7 and I have no real technical reason to upgrade until the software I use demands it.

i can't imagine of how any software outside of metro apps could demand anything specifically from W8 that it can't in W7. Seems their focus is entirely Tablets, i think their being narrow minded about the future of computing.

 

[Chiropteran]

There is no pattern, those pictures are just a silly meme and ignore the realities that contradict them.

Here is my personal opinion of various windows versions, and IMO there is no good/bad/good/bad pattern:

Win 3- terrible, just use DOS
Win 3.1- slightly better, but still inferior to DOS, another BAD
Windows 95- Good compared to everything up until this point, but BAD compared to future OS.
Windows 98- Fixed a lot of the issues with 95, but had some problems of it's own, better in Win98 Second Edition.
Windows 2000- Good, amazing, perfect OS. Flawless in every way.
Windows ME- Considered bad, but IMO pretty much equal to windows 98. Clearly inferior to Windows 2000 though.
Windows XP- At release, BAD- lots of driver issues, some infamous problems with sound blaster live cards and via drivers, but after the 3rd service pack it was mostly redeemed and considered good.
Windows Vista- At release, considered BAD by most, but IMO most of the blame is on bad drivers from nvidia or ATI. After SP1 I had no problems with Vista, although many still consider it bad. Still nothing wrong with it IMO, but 7 makes it obsolete.
Windows 7- Good, considered good by most users.

 

[oynaz]

If you consider XP Service Pack 2 a seperate OS, there is actually something to the good/bad myth:

Win 3 - Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Win 3.1(1) - Good - not nearly as good as the much older Amiga Workbench, but still OK.
Windows 95- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Windows 98- Windows 95 which actually worked.
Windows ME- WTF happened? Should never have been released. It had a fucking memory leak, for god's sake.
Windows 2000- Really good.
Windows XP- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (are we seeing a pattern here?)
Windows XP SP2- Good.
Windows Vista- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (indeed we are)
Windows 7- Good.

 

[pantsaregood]

The perception of a "good/bad" pattern is ridiculous.

Windows 98, 98SE, and ME were somewhat closer to being service packs of Windows 95 than actual new operating systems. ME wasn't any more "bad" than Windows 98, it just happened that hardware had advanced to a point that the DOS kernel couldn't cope with by ME's release.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 are also very closely related. Vista's poor reputation came from a lack of drivers being provided by hardware OEMs, not the OS itself actually being at fault. People flipped out about the perceived high use of RAM in NT 6.0 when it was released because they were used to Windows XP just letting a load of RAM sit unused. NT 6.0 uses SuperFetch to load frequently used programs into RAM that isn't being used otherwise. Running nothing but Explorer and Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows 7 actually sits at under 350 MB of RAM used.

Windows 7 is barely even better than Vista, really. SuperFetch gained some minor optimizations and the upgraded taskbar was introduced. In all honesty, Windows 7 could've easily been a service pack.

Windows 8 is a huge departure, though. The kernel is very much the same as Vista/7, but the UI has been overhauled. Adjusting to the new UI may cause trouble for people, but instability shouldn't be an issue like it was with Vista. Vista needed new drivers - any Vista/7 drivers should work fine in Windows 8.

 

[oynaz]

"ME wasn't any more "bad" than Windows 98,"
It definitely was. It introduced serious erros, including a memory leak.

"Windows 7 is barely even better than Vista, really. SuperFetch gained some minor optimizations and the upgraded taskbar was introduced. In all honesty, Windows 7 could've easily been a service pack."
Under the hood, there might not be a lot of difference (I don't know), but Vistas UI was annoying as hell. Windows 7 fixed a lot of these annoyances. For the end user, that meant the difference between good and bad.

And don't get me started on XP pre service pack 2. Ugh.

 

[_Rick_]

Windows 7 broke window border menu's.
I will never forgive that!
UI-wise thus, I prefer Vista. Though the Win 7 task bar almost replaces the functionality, it just lacks the extra amount of space additional bars gave.

As for Windows 8 - I shall wait and see. I will probably have to get whatever they call the server version anyway, in order to keep non-anonymous NFS-support. That's what disappeared in Vista with regards to XP.... One hand giveth, one hand taketh away...

 

[dagamer34]

The desktop is considered "legacy" by Microsoft by the fact there's not much to do to improve APIs (which also means apps shouldn't break hopefully). Far more time will be spent building up the Metro APIs in the future to create a robust platform.

I don't see Microsoft actually killing off the desktop, but it's obvious they aren't promoting it anymore. Businesses will continue to use it until they feel they need to make a Metro app for their tablet users (which just happen to work on a desktop/laptop as well). The benefit of server side syncing and storage means that you can log into any computer, install an app and run it as if it were your own, which is something we absolutely don't have now.

Plus, Windows to Go is an awesome business feature that I don't know how anyone can ignore.

 

[Chiropteran]

If you consider XP Service Pack 2 a seperate OS, there is actually something to the good/bad myth:

Win 3 - Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Win 3.1(1) - Good - not nearly as good as the much older Amiga Workbench, but still OK.
Windows 95- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Windows 98- Windows 95 which actually worked.
Windows ME- WTF happened? Should never have been released. It had a fucking memory leak, for god's sake.
Windows 2000- Really good.
Windows XP- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (are we seeing a pattern here?)
Windows XP SP2- Good.
Windows Vista- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (indeed we are)
Windows 7- Good.

Except Windows 2000 was released before Windows ME.

 

[poohbear]

the biggest problem with Windows 8 is Windows 7. the vast majority of people are more than satisfied with Win7 and are'nt just gonna throw money @ a needless & yet unproven OS. Win8 was designed for the mobile market, not for desktops. Simple as that.

 

[Kristijonas]

Windows 8 is faster - fact.
I like windows 8 user interface better - subjective opinion.
Thus I won't be using win7 any more.

 

[Kristijonas]

If you consider XP Service Pack 2 a seperate OS, there is actually something to the good/bad myth:

Win 3 - Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Win 3.1(1) - Good - not nearly as good as the much older Amiga Workbench, but still OK.
Windows 95- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished
Windows 98- Windows 95 which actually worked.
Windows ME- WTF happened? Should never have been released. It had a fucking memory leak, for god's sake.
Windows 2000- Really good.
Windows XP- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (are we seeing a pattern here?)
Windows XP SP2- Good.
Windows Vista- Bad. Bug-ridden and unfinished (indeed we are)
Windows 7- Good.

1. I disagree with half of your good/bad ratings. So it's subjective.
2. It's just silly, next we're going to see taro cards used to decide whether an OS is going to be successful?
3. Even by your standards, win8 SP1 could be good. Can be released very quick. (though personally I see little to be fixed)