this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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We’re still talking about Microsoft, right?
They have a looooong history of enshittification and footgunning that predates “AI” by decades, no matter how much the world has depended on their stuff. So no, I suppose I wouldn’t think that, as that would break decades of precedence for MS. But I suppose I never trusted them in the first place.
It's strange to me because well, I was a 20+ years windows veteran who managed to never have issues on any of my windows installs prior to the last couple years when the ai thing went full swing. maybe part of that was me, because I was inattentive and reckless, but it really just became too much to ignore. i have a genuinely hard time with the idea of essentially retconning the way things always used to Just Work for me in my Windows days. maybe it was bad when I was there and I just didn't notice. but blegh.
MS's antics extend well beyond Windows, unfortunately. There are long blogs and writeups dedicated to it.
But what you said is also kinda true. 7 and XP worked reasonably well as long as you didn't mess with them, push their bounds too much, or use them for anything "weird." But you also probably missed a lot of dysfunction in the background.
I'm not trying to shill for Windows 7/XP era OSX or linux or anything either. But Windows has always been kinda notorious.
I never really got into OS modding until recently, so that could be why everything felt smooth until the end. Looking back I suspect a lot of my good experience chalked down to luck.
This is true of all OSes TBH. Issues arise when you start to mess with them.
Remember this if you switch to linux.
I've been on Linux for the last year, that's definitely something I learned the hard way multiple times on the path. I'm very nervous about the move towards "AI" handling a lot of that stuff.
Can't say I've had your experience, Windows always had issues. Think 7 was the least problematic version for me and the last one I remember fondly.
I have a car diagnostics laptop running 8.1 because it doesn't support legacy boot for 7 and is too weak for 10. That UX was horrendous. Then came 10 which was unusable without an SSD. That sounds like the norm now but back then a lot of people didn't have them. I'm not even going to mention 11, it came out before the AI craze and has sucked since release.
But the really crazy side of Microsoft is the ERPs. Way too much always changing. Good old systems being retired because they have a worse new one to replace it with, etc.
I skipped 8/8.1 purely because the look of it annoyed me. XP and 7 basically ran flawless on all my machines I had them on. I wasn't too annoyed with 10 on HDD, but SSD definitely helped. 11 felt fundamentally identical to 10 for me for the first few years, and the AI stuff was when everything fell apart for me. It may be a matter of luck, ignorance, and not understanding quite what was wrong.
The situation with Windows the last few years has left me cynical of this entire craze. hopefully things end up alright in the end.