> That was actually Windows 2000, based on the NT 4 code base. It was near perfect, given the era it was made in.
I also remember Windows 2000 fondly. It was really really stable. Even if it looked like it's frozen like a polar ice cap (they weren't melting that bad back then), a short coffee break would give it enough time to normalize itself and continue like nothing happened.
I stuck with Windows 2000 for many years after XP was released. XP brought absolutely nothing I wanted and a lot of things I didn’t want. All the truly interesting stuff, like WinFS, never made it in.
WinFS wasn’t destined for Windows 2000 nor XP, but rather Vista.
I was an intern at Microsoft in 2004, and personally helped make it clear that WinFS also wasn’t ready anyway. Fwiw, I think the iOS model of “makes users and apps no longer care about directories” has been more successful than the original WinFS plan of “maybe it’s all a SQL-ish database instead”.
I actually ran a series of them in VMs for years because of their quick response and light resource usage, and they still ran all the stuff I needed. Loved that OS
I have a Windows XP VM to run the software for my MD player. You're right, the OS from that era is lightning quick in today's hardware, even in a VM. Also, the USB passthhru is problem-free interestingly.
I also remember Windows 2000 fondly. It was really really stable. Even if it looked like it's frozen like a polar ice cap (they weren't melting that bad back then), a short coffee break would give it enough time to normalize itself and continue like nothing happened.
Should retry it in a VM sometime. :)