Its web browser, Internet Explorer, frequently refused to load web pages. Windows Me also introduced System Restore, designed to let you go back to a previous snapshot of Windows if you ran into trouble. Unfortunately, if you had a virus in that Restore Point that you had killed, Windows Me would restore the virus as well. There are too many other issues to go into here, but the operating system was so bad that people began calling it Windows Mistake Edition Me , instead of the Windows Millennium Edition.
Ah, the special kind of badness that was Windows Vista. Released in , five years after the well-received Windows XP, Vista was born under a bad sign, jinxed from the beginning, destined for failure.
Work on it began five months before the release of Windows XP. But developers will be developers, and soon many of the new technologies and features designed for Blackcomb nudged their way into Vista development, slowing things down drastically and leading to chaos and confusion during the development process. It was a constant nag, requiring you to interrupt your work to do things as simple and basic as open Disk Defragmenter.
Vista was also notoriously unstable. But all that pales in comparison with a far bigger hardware problem — the operating system simply refused to run, or ran so badly it was useless on countless PCs.
There were several versions of Vista, and the consumer version of Vista was delayed until January , after the holiday shopping season. There was only one problem with that bait-and-switch scheme. A class action suit was launched against Microsoft as a result. Emails from top Microsoft executives uncovered during the suit were remarkably damning. Sure, after all the fixes, Windows XP was one of the greatest versions of Windows of all time. To prevent piracy, Microsoft required customers who built their own machines or upgraded to activate their copy of Windows XP over the internet or by telephone.
Luckily, Microsoft continued to refine XP for years, and it eventually became a solid, stable OS that many were hesitant to give up. The release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 was a pivotal moment that made the operating system much more secure.
Even worse, it teased full desktop support with a desktop mode that would only allow Microsoft desktop apps such as Microsoft Office. Third-party apps were forbidden, even if recompiled for ARM.
Unfortunately, Microsoft got a little too enthusiastic with its new strategy, forcing its core customer base of desktop PC users to compromise their productivity for a new touchscreen-first interface called Metro.
It was a great interface for tablets, but not for desktops. Once you got to the desktop, there was no Start menu , and there were annoying hot corners. If you left your mouse in the upper-right corner of the screen for a moment, a Charms bar would pop up. The reviews for it were dismal , and Microsoft backpedaled hard, first with Windows 8. Throughout, many users simply stuck with Windows 7 or even jumped ship to Macs. One of the earliest complaints about Vista was that it ran sluggishly on machines that performed very well with XP.
It was also a memory hog. This was partly thanks to its flashy new translucent Aero interface and always-running gadgets , which taxed graphics capabilities, memory, and CPU power. Then there were puzzling annoyances that had been meant to help, but that actually just got in the way.
Case in point: The dreaded User Account Control UAC prompts that would pop up every few minutes to cover the screen whenever you actually tried to do something with your computer. Luckily, it was possible to turn them off with some tinkering, but what was Microsoft thinking? What was wrong with Windows Me? Well, chief among the problems was that many people found that it crashed—and it crashed a lot.
To our knowledge, no one has ever explained exactly why Me was more unstable than the already unstable Windows 98, but we suspect that it was due to bugs that were introduced when Microsoft hastily added new features to Me without proper testing.
There were other issues, too: Programs running on Me tended to produce lots of memory leaks, which could cause crashes as well. To add insult to injury, Microsoft already had the answer up its sleeve: Windows , which was stable and glorious.
Share via: LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email More Are you a programmer or software developer looking for a new way of expressing frustration?
Do you work in a tough, high-octane environment where the only acceptable form Read more. Last month, IEEE Spectrum released their definite ranking of the most popular programming languages of Share via: LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email More At one point in your career as an IT professional, your next best career move will be offered rather than found organically. Share via: LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email More App development is bigger business than ever in , but the key to App Store success is in the pricing… Many developers choose to cut their teeth with Read more.
Share via: LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Email More might have seemed like a year full of devastation and despair, but hopefully these 13 inventions that changed the world will change your mind… Read more. Next Previous. Lindows Release date: No, that was not a typo. Lindows Lindows. Corel Linux Corel Linux. Windows Vista Release date: Vista is widely known as a flop, and followed the Microsoft hit and miss pattern. Windows Vista Windows Vista. MS-DOS 4. MS-Dos 4. If you need a nanny watching your every move and scolding you for downloading from the wrong crowd, Windows 8.
More: How To Create a Windows 8. The easiest way to find the shutdown option is to bring up the charms menu, hit settings, then hit the power button and select Shutdown. Fix It: If you want to shut down more quickly, simply right click on the desktop and select Shortcut from the New menu.
However, on a laptop where you already have password protection, the lock screen is nothing more than a roadblock that makes you click one extra time before you can start or wake your PC. Fix It: To get rid of Windows 8. Laptop Mag. Limited Modern UI Windows.
0コメント