Favorite Windows Flavor

At any given time I have three or four desktop and laptop PCs on my workbench. These systems are almost always Windows XP boxes, with the increasing exception of Vista machines and the occasional Macintosh.

This week, though, I received a Windows 98 machine. The PC required a new hard disk. The client did not wish to replace the system with a new XP system, which was my recommendation. Thus, I was taken back to the days of installing Win9x. Yikes. Painful. In fact, drivers proved so troublesome I upgraded the client to Windows 2000 Professional (as I had a retail box copy available).

Wow. Installing Windows 2000, something I haven't done for years, reminded me just how fast, graceful and stable that Windows' flavor was. It's a shame Microsoft provided this sleek OS with such a short shelf life.

In particular, I'm amazed at how fast Windows 2000 runs. And its windows; they're very clean. With just 128MB RAM, the Celeron PC was quick to boot, lightning fast to open windows and fast to access email, install Office, etc. Oh, how I miss it.

Am I the only one?