Dollar Tree.
It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.
And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.
And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.
Gone were the days.
Microsoft Windows. Oh boy has it gotten bad.
It was always bad.
Windows 3.1 was bad. It was ugly, it was slow. The Macs of that era looked better, although their multitasking was even worse than Windows, somehow. It was pretty clear that 3.1 was just a desktop GUI over a text OS.
Windows 95 and 98 were bad. They were graphical improvements over 3.1 / NT, but they were so brittle and janky. Remember bullshit like “TEXTFI~1.TXT”?
The latest versions are all terrible too. Like, try to make a change to a system setting and you get the Windows 10/11 themed settings menu. But, if you try to make any kind of advanced setting change and you’re taken over to a GUI that shows that under the hood it’s still effectively running Windows XP components.
I thought Win 2000 was an improvement. Didn’t Win 3.1 literally run on top of DOS? Like, DOS was the actual operating system and Win 3.1 was merely the graphical user interface/desktop environment, so it consumed a bunch more hardware resources? I think I remember having to run many programs out of DOS so that they would run more smoothly than if I used Win 3.1. In that sense, Win 3.1 was really Ski Free, Space Cadet Pinball, Solitaire, Minesweeper, and a nice file manager.
I also liked the improvements of Win Vista, but my laptop couldn’t seem to keep up with the requirements needed for things to run smoothly. Win 7 seemed like a smoother Win Vista, so that was nice. However, I felt let down that there were no major noticeable improvements other than performance, which could also have been attributed to improvements in hardware. Around then, I started experimenting with Linux out of sheer curiosity and slowly switched to Linux 100%. In the past several years, I know about Win only from what I hear on Lemmy, so ofc I think it’s terrible, but I wouldn’t know from personal experience and judgment. I’m happy af with Linux anyway.
I recently ran Windows 2000 in a VM to pull some files from some install discs (grabbing Microsoft Train Simulator content from disc images off of archive.org to play in OpenRails in case anyone reading this is the same kind of crazy I am) and it was kinda striking how usable it was even in a modern context. Sure certain shortcuts and niceties hadn’t been thought of yet but it’s surprisingly modern for a 25 year old desktop operating system
Windows 95, 98 and ME were all DOS based.
To be fair to the XP days, the OS was a bit of a malware cesspool. Now, MS provide pre-installed corpo malware.
98SE was peak.
Windows ME ftw.
Can you clarify? I’m confused as to whether you think Win ME was the best or worst version of Win.
In what way? I continue to use Windows 11 just fine.
Must be bliss, mate
Could you expound?
The OS is riddled with ads. How can anyone be okay with ads running at the OS level is beyond me.
The tracking is also getting much much worse, they spy on every fucking thing they can.
I have never seen an ad using Windows.
That’s impressive. Even the IT-managed corporate Windows 11 Enterprise installs at work have ads in it. Nothing like what you’d find buying a cheap Windows laptop from someplace like Best Buy with the Windows Home edition, but there’s still ads in places like the start menu. I can get rid of some of them, at least temporarily, but not being an admin on the machine I can’t seem to squash them entirely.
I use windows both at home and at work and have never seen an ad in either place. I really don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing other people’s experiences because that’s not what I’m trying to do, but I also haven’t gone out of my way to disable any special setting or anything.
Lemmy is a bunch of Linux users who genuinely don’t know how to custom-install Windows without all the bloat
It’s bizarre, how the fuck are they managing Linux if they can’t even do that?!?
I can do that. In fact, I do that for the only device in my home that still has Windows. But my point is that you don’t want to really use a system where you need to do something like debloating the OS after every update.
My days of installing LTSC, ShutUp10, Massgrave, modifying ISOs, unchecking 20 checkboxes during install and installing hosts files are over.
Nowadays I just install Linux and it does what I want without begging for it.
Did ye aye
Because they like the idea of doing that and still feeling like they own their computer in every way possible.
It’s pretty sad that the best windows experience now, is just breaking it down to pieces and custom installing.
I have been using Linux 100% for the past several years without any use of Win. The last time I used Win, it was Win 7 on a work computer. All I know about Win since is from what I see on Lemmy and the very few short instances when I might look at a friend’s computer. What I remember not liking about it was a lack of control in comparison to Linux and that it would get slower and slower with updates. Is the latest Win really as bad as Lemmy makes it out to be? Are there ads in the OS? Does it truly spy on you without your knowledge?
I understand there to be telemetry. As I already said, I have never, not once, ever seen an ad using Windows from 95 to 11.
Is there a particular edition that’s prone to this? I don’t see any on my work or personal laptop. Either that or they’re so subtle that I don’t even see them.