Obviously VI won - you certainly don't see lots of Roman texts referring to Emacs.

Ahh yes the good old "six" editor

And its follow-on, "six thousand!" :P

Idk what you pulled off with Win ME Spiro. I had it on a P2 machine for 2 years without a single bluescreen ever.

Same for Vista. I used it from the day I got released (on a P4 with 1GB memory back then) and never had any problems with it. Ony UAC could get a bit annoying at times.

The experience with ME was very variable. I could never get it to work right either, but I know that others used it successfully enough. I didn't invest too much time in it because by then I had already moved on to 2000, and the NT line just offered so much more than the 9x line.

It's easy to forget now how much of a revelation 2000 was when it released. XP was touted as the convergence of the 9x and NT lines, but the vast majority of the work had actually already been done in 2000, and XP just added a "pretty" UI (which everyone hated with a passion at the time) and some user-friendly options. My own testing at the time did show that it had also re-introduced some nastiness and bugs from the 9x line that 2000 had gotten rid of, but I can't recall which. While XP must have seemed like the promised land to anyone who was totally fed up of 9x, in many respects it was a step backwards from 2000.

Regarding Vista, typically I evaluate a new Microsoft OS in the context of how well (or otherwise) it behaves in an Active Directory domain before I look at it from a home user persepective. Vista didn't behave at all: UAC used to block logon scripts from running, and the proliferation of "My ..." folders was unmanageable. I attended a pre-release event where I put it to the Microsoft guy that "all these new features seem great, but how are we going to manage them on a domain if there's no server version and no admin tools yet?" and he couldn't answer. Even today there are still indicators that Microsoft's mistakes on Vista haven't been fully swept of out the product line: for example, the server versions install with the Game Explorer. While that may sound like nitpicking on the surface, it is nonetheless symptomatic of some deeply messed-up thinking.

It's usually (to me) a solid indicator that a Windows release is going to be something of a mis-step when the client version releases out of step with the server version (but then, I have different requirements). XP was essentially unusable on a domain for the best part of 2 years, Vista for 1 year. 2000, 7 and 8.1 were immediately usable. 10 is going to be unusable too, and I don't have much faith in it at RTM because of that. When the server version releases, and when both get what we used to call a service pack or two to bring them more into sync, then it'll get more interesting.

I usually wait for at least 1 service pack to be released before updating my operating system, and I always keep my previous versions (I will not let go of Windows 7 or Windows XP when I get Windows 10), however I need it for Direct3D 12 for my engine, and since I will be keeping Windows 7 and Windows XP around anyway I am not obligated to deal with any out-of-the-gate issues it may have, so I will be getting it as soon as possible.

Will be quite annoying to have to constantly switch hard drives from slave to master and back each time I want to switch between operating systems though… Or I guess I can get another laptop…

Sigh.

L. Spiro

Wait... 'slave to master'? What the hell arse system are you running? SATA did away with that insanity and between the Windows boot loader and the BIOS ability to select drives... well... wut? o.O

Oh, good. Haven’t looked into that since the early 2000’s.

L. Spiro

Biggest problem I have when installing Windows is the utter paranoia that I'm about to nuke the wrong drive when installing... fortunately smaller SSDs have made that slightly less likely to happen... but damn if I don't check that size and ID multiple times before pushing the button...

Biggest problem I have when installing Windows is the utter paranoia that I'm about to nuke the wrong drive when installing... fortunately smaller SSDs have made that slightly less likely to happen... but damn if I don't check that size and ID multiple times before pushing the button...

Hehe yeah, that gave me trouble when I was installing Windows on one of two identical 500GB hard drives... I ended up physically disconnecting the other one just to be absolutely sure

The experience with ME was very variable. I could never get it to work right either, but I know that others used it successfully enough.

I only had one problem with windows ME and it was a biggie. I'm the person who never completely shuts down his PC. Back then, I'd leave it running 24/7 (it was my parents electricity bill and i was young and naive) and these days i don't leave it running 24/7 but tend to hit 'sleep' instead of 'shut down' to have better boot up times.

I couldn't really do either successfully on windows millennium because windows explorer had a memory leak. After about 10 days it would have leaked so many GDI resources that i couldn't use it, windows would show up as grey rectangles and the thing would churn to a halt necessitating a reboot.

It drove me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY!

I'm the person who never completely shuts down his PC. Back then, I'd leave it running 24/7 (it was my parents electricity bill and i was young and naive) and these days i don't leave it running 24/7 but tend to hit 'sleep' instead of 'shut down' to have better boot up times.

Huh, this is what you'd use a motion sensor switch and a master-slave power strip for once upon a time, and nowadays you can do it for around 30-40 currency with a Raspberry or an Arduino with ethernet shield, a 2.99 sensor, an old CAT-5 cable, and wake-on-LAN.

Computer powers on when you enter the room, and has finished booting when you're seated.