MS Team's Motto for Windows 95: 'It Sucks Less'
Start me up!
This week marks the 15th anniversary of the release of Windows 95. Some would say that Windows 95 with its Start menu (along with the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up") ushered in a new generation for Microsoft as its GUI moved in to bump out MS-DOS and all of its competitors.
With it also came the very first Internet Explorer browser, now also a decade and a half old. At the time, Netscape Navigator was still king, but times sure have changed. (Correction: Internet Explorer came slightly later through the Windows 95 Plus! Pack.)
In reminiscing about the old days, long-time Microsoft employee Raymond Chen revealed in his blog that during the development of Windows 95, one of the team members attended a Mac conference wearing a Windows 95 team t-shirt.
The rest of his team jokingly said that they should get his dental records first to be able to identify his remains after the conference.
Thankfully, the t-shirt wearing team member returned with a funny story:
— I got a lot of funny looks. And one guy, upon confirming that I really did work on the Windows 95 project, said to me, "I have to commend you guys on Windows 95 so far. It sucks less."
Interestingly, the developers found this quite funny and adopted a new, unofficial team motto: "Windows 95: It sucks less."

Windows 98 - It's sucks even less
Windows ME - We're so very sorry
Windows XP - Tons less suck!
Windows Vista - Oops, our bad
Windows 7 - at least it's better than Vista
You know, as much as people complain about Vista, I didn't have any issues with it. Ran Vista Ultimate x64 for two years (until August 2009). Is Windows 7 better? Hell yes, but Vista wasn't bad. People just don't like learning curves, but it was that learning curve (in addition to bug fixes and feature enhancements) that made Windows 7 a success. If it went straight from XP to 7, I don't think there would have been as much praise for 7 as there was.
On the other hand, Windows ME was awful, freaking awful. I got that pre-installed (I can only imagine how much worse it was to "step it up" from Windows 98) and it was so broken everywhere. I would have to reboot a minimum of three times a day (at least with Vista I could leave it running for weeks without having to reboot).
I am!
Windows 98 - It's sucks even less
Windows ME - We're so very sorry
Windows XP - Tons less suck!
Windows Vista - Oops, our bad
Windows 7 - at least it's better than Vista
virtual machines work so much better for this. Trust me. I have virtuals for Win 3.1, Win95, Win98, and WinXP. They work great for older games. The Win98 virtual works better for Warcraft 2 than the WinXP does.
...not that I would ever consider trading in my current system for one of the Win95 era...
You know, as much as people complain about Vista, I didn't have any issues with it. Ran Vista Ultimate x64 for two years (until August 2009). Is Windows 7 better? Hell yes, but Vista wasn't bad. People just don't like learning curves, but it was that learning curve (in addition to bug fixes and feature enhancements) that made Windows 7 a success. If it went straight from XP to 7, I don't think there would have been as much praise for 7 as there was.
On the other hand, Windows ME was awful, freaking awful. I got that pre-installed (I can only imagine how much worse it was to "step it up" from Windows 98) and it was so broken everywhere. I would have to reboot a minimum of three times a day (at least with Vista I could leave it running for weeks without having to reboot).
Contrast that with Apple, and his Holiness, Steve Jobs. This guy really does believe he is god's gift to the tech industry.