Is it my imagination or generally every other microsoft new big thing an absolute disaster.
Let me try to recall, from personal experience
Win 3.1 - good for its time
Windows 95 - good improvement
Windows 98 - meh
(Windows NT - ok, but not really for home use)
Windows ME - disaster
Windows - XP, great for many years
Windows Vista - Disaster
Windows 7 - Good
Windows 8 - Disaster
The one thing I never understand is why software needs to be updated for each new version. I have sophisticated software that I wrote for Windows 3.1 that many of our plants nation wide still use. It works perfectly fine on windows 7, and even prints very pretty color graphs and charts on modern printers. The only difference in its performance between then and now is it can crunch multiple years of data infinitely faster than it did in 1992 (but thats because of the machine speed).
What about Win 2000? But you’re right about every-other OS. What they do is upgrade the kernal, platform, code, APIs, etc. in the first release then continue development into the second release as the final version. Ergo, 95 to 98; 2000 to XP; Vista to W7; W8 to ? Just read the kernal versions between releases.
W8 actually has some really good computing features and benefits so we’ll see how they fix it. Right now it just has a horrible and poorly thought out desktop. They were trying to steal-back consumers from tablets to save the workstation. The desktop may be dead however. The computing power in tablets is just getting too strong. Who wouldn’t want to take their entire system with them wherever they go with their backup in the cloud? Irresistable and inevitable IMO.
CC