It wasn't meant to be this way. Windows XP, now no longer supported, wasn't meant to be popular. For all its popularity and sustained usage, people seem to have forgotten something important about it: it sucked.
The Ars forums are a place for geeks to hang out and chat about tech, and especially in light of the hostility shown toward Windows 8, we thought it might be fun to take a look at how our forum dwellers reacted when first introduced to Microsoft's ancient operating system.
The biggest problem with Windows XP was that it was Microsoft's first operating system to feature Product Activation, the licensing system that tied product keys to hardware fingerprints. Gone were the days of buying one copy of the software and installing it on multiple machines. With Windows XP, every system would need its own copy.
When the first news of activation broke, in January 2001, the response from the enthusiasts of the Ars forums was immediate—and broadly negative. The decision to lock down Whistler, as it was then known, was decried as evil.
The consequences of the Product Activation decision were to be many and varied. First of all, it meant that nobody would upgrade to Windows XP. Digitali said that he would be "staying with Win2K." madmanX was similarly "perfectly happy with win2k pro."
Others had even more exotic plans. Claiming that Microsoft had "officially gone too far," mav.rc wasn't going to put up with it, even if it meant having to switch to Linux, BeOS—remember BeOS?—or even, "(gasp!)," buying a Mac.
"Microsoft will learn this lesson or live to regret it."
Lawsuits were expected, and the burden on Microsoft of supporting online activation was argued to be immense, with activation expected to knock down core network infrastructure due to the loads it would create. Jeremy Reimer (then going by the moniker Lord Baldrick) expected a "huge" backlash, betting that Microsoft would back down in the long run.
Some of the claims were remarkably prescient, just not in the way their posters expected. Painless suggested that "one of these days people won't upgrade any more." This turned out to be somewhat accurate... it's just that it's Windows XP, Product Activation and all, that they'd stick with.
Another notable prediction came from amani, who said that Microsoft would simply force people to upgrade by "refusing to support older versions of Windows." What we've learned since then is that even cutting support doesn't, in fact, force people to upgrade. That's precisely the problem Microsoft is now facing.
Product Activation wasn't the only thing Windows XP had going against it. It was, in the view of many people, monumentally ugly. The bright colors of the "Luna" interface led to it being swiftly labeled a "Fisher-Price" or "Teletubby" operating system.
"It looks like a Fisher Price toy" wrote Spinlock. tmf2 was no fan either. "I dislike the Fisher-Price desktop scheme named Luna or Lunatic, something like that." Kosmo defended the use of the Fisher-Price description as it was a "brilliant reference to [Windows XP]'s candy-assed GUI."
Even before Windows XP was launched, the operating system's defenders in the Battlefront were tired of the Fisher-Price label, but it continued unabated. Even longtime Windows fans like, er, myself were displeased with the bulging, pseudo-3D design that Windows XP introduced.
It's an enduring criticism, and yet, it's one that apparently had no resonance with the broader consumer market. PC users flocked to Windows XP in droves, and not only were they not turned off by the Luna theme, many of them actually appeared to like it. Subsequent operating systems wouldn't stick with Luna, with Windows Vista and 7 both going for something arguably even more over the top with fakery, albeit less colorful, with the Aero Glass theme. Plainly, it wasn't actually a problem for Windows XP's adoption.
It did, however, keep me on Windows 2000 until that was no longer tenable.
Traditional problems
A Windows release wouldn't be a Windows release without worries about compatibility, and Windows XP had a harder time than most in this regard. It was the destination not just for Windows 2000 and NT 4 users, but also many millions of people migrating away from Windows 98 and its legacy of DOS compatibility. Even a year after release, Windows 98 SE was recommended as the platform to go for if you were a gamer.
To this day, there are still people clinging on to Windows 98, even going so far as to produce new drivers for the ancient operating system in a bid to let modern software run on it (though that project appears to be largely abandoned now, having received its last code change in 2013).
On top of all these, there were those who didn't want Windows XP to succeed for reasons that are best described as absurd. Self-styled security expert Steve Gibson proclaimed that Windows XP would somehow bring about the end of the Internet, thanks to its integrated support for raw sockets.
Raw sockets allow app developers to send network traffic that either spoofs its origin, making it harder to trace back to the source, or is malformed in particular ways, which can be useful in provoking bugs. Gibson felt that equipping a consumer operating system with such a capability was dangerously irresponsible (quietly failing to mention that there was already Windows 98 malware that took advantage of raw sockets simply by bundling suitable drivers).
Surprisingly, the normally divided forum community was unanimous in its rejection of the raw sockets brouhaha, with Flying Jelly Attack Confectionery writing "I am no fan of MS, but I think he is taking this a little too far."
Windows XP was released, and the end of the Internet didn't actually happen. Evidence that Windows XP's raw socket access was harmful was notable only by its absence. For no particularly good reason, Microsoft did restrict raw sockets in Service Pack 2 in a number of ways, a move that inconvenienced software (such as excellent port-scanning tool nmap) that legitimately used raw sockets. It did literally nothing to hinder malicious software.
It all just goes to show, a lot of the things that might worry nerds and Ars readers may not be such a big deal for the computer-using public.
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