I'll be honest, I used Windows XP fairly extensively then switched to Lubuntu while learning about Windows 7. My workplace moved from NT4 to Windows 7, and then to Windows 10 which is the only versions I've had serious exposure to.
My only real experience of Vista and 8 has been installing it on folk's devices, patching them to a current state, and Ninite-ing them full of handy applications.
I'm afraid I can't speak authoritatively on the subject, however taking a step back - MS do have a record for driving hardware uptake with their system releases.
In theory it's not a bad thing - Unreal and Quake II (among many) requiring 3D accelerator hardware largely drove PC gaming into the lead for cutting edge graphics - but the type of hardware MS have been requiring has always been a bit of a clusterfuck - a prime recent example being the supposed requirement of a TPM board in a Win11 computer.
My anecdotal experience is that Vista - while pretty - is a bit of a bloatfest regardless of what hardware you run it on.
Would it? If I'm already a user on a local device, surely my parental code would suffice and turn a ludicrous process into a one (and a half) step process?
Ah I remember upgrading from 98SE to Millennium Edition and it was just ass. That said, I reformatted and installed Me and used the 98 CD to pass the upgrade check, and I had very few issues with it. Shit like System Restore was gash - in fact, any of the new tools installed with Me were awful - but I just effectively used it as 98 Third Edition and it did the job nicely for me.
I agree that 95 was a big - if not monumental - step up in graphics interface driven OSes... but the first few releases were unstable as fuck. Whether it was horrendous shutdown issues because ACPI support was super flaky at the time, to trying to run com/com as a command to insta-bluescreen the system. The latter is so much of an edge case though that I almost cut myself typing it.
Jesus, my son wanted to add a classmate as a friend on Xbox Live last night. It should have been a two step process from a parent perspective: Authenticate, then authorise (though the lad was delegated the task of the latter technically).
When he tried to add the friend, I had to:
Enter my parental code (fair enough);
Enter my Microsoft Account password because it was apparently a transaction involving personal data;
Scan the QR code to do this on another device (admittedly optional);
Enter the email address of my MS account;
Enter the 2FA code emailed to me;
Stop the passkey creation process;
Confirm that I didn't want a passkey;
Skip the age verification;
Turn off the personalised ads
Just so he could get to the point where he could select "add as a friend", what the actual fuck
Microsoft's operating systems have been very hit or miss - certainly their consumer operating systems - with the classic rule being "every other one is decent":
Windows ✅
Windows 2.0 ❌
Windows 3.11 ✅
Windows 95 ❌ (but in fairness it was a good crack, OSR2 was decent)
Windows 98 ✅
Windows Me ❌ (unless it was a clean install, the upgrade was horrific)
Windows XP ✅
Windows Vista ❌
Windows 7 ✅
Windows 8 ❌
Windows 10 ✅
Windows 11❌
The more business focussed OS's like Windows for Workgroups, NT4, and 2000 were rock solid in fairness.
Their business practices have always been shady as fuck too. Embrace, extend, extinguish is firmly burned into computer hobbyists minds.
I'm glad you mentioned the bugs. I was slowly leaning towards it but I've done my fair bit of... "unpaid beta testing" for one lifetime.
I miss my BlackBerry phones. The Titan range was cool but buggy as well. If they could just do a Nothing phone with a QWERTY keyboard, I would literally buy one overnight.
I ask my barber for the "full works", sit back, and close my eyes for half hour listening to whatever generic chilled dance playlist he's got going on YouTube. It could be a dude, a woman, or anything in between, it doesn't matter.
When he slaps my shoulders and says "ok boss, what do you think?", that's my cue to get up and leave.
It's my brief moment of indulgence every other month or so. Bliss.