I actually thought XP looked like a toy OS full of bloat when it came out and way too flashy and trying too hard to be more 98/ME-like to attract consumers. 98/ME was pretty crap even if I have fond memories of gamimg on it, but it crashed all the f&@%£ time. You just learned to live with it. W2k/2003 was a whole lot more stable and a “real” OS, not some house of cards built on top of DOS. Boring, oh yes, and not many games worked at first, but stable and with networking that wasn’t just an afterthought. XP was better for gaming and it was possible to de-LEGO-fy it somewhat. The silver theme was actually pretty ok, once you got used to it, but I don’t miss it at all.

I didn’t much care for W1.0, either. Or long pig, if you get that reference. 👴