Windows. Review on Choosing a Windows Variant

Here is the review for the various flavours of the Windows OS. I have not touched Windows NT, since I have not used it.

Windows 95:

This is the first flavour of Windows shipped by Microsoft. The system requirements are pretty low- it would work even on a Pentium 1 processor with 16 MB RAM. I have found this to be a pretty stable operating system. It is in fact great if you are having an'antique' pc(no offence intended), meaning to say, Pentium 1 processors and the like.

Windows 98:

This was the second release of Microsoft, and with it brought a large number of bugs, errors and at the same time, the famous'blue screen of death'(BSOD). For me, it was a very bad experience using this OS. Every few days, it would throw up some error and crash! TO be fair, it did have some improvements in the look and feel part, but that was nullified by the number of bugs. There were many security holes in this OS and Microsoft used to release those patches, which needed to be installed if you really wanted peace of mind.

Windows 98 SE:

This was a later version of Windows 98, brought out sometime in October, and had fixed most of the major bugs and security holes in the previous release. It was much more stable as well and I would recommend using this OS for anyone, who has a  processor speed of 1 GHz or less. The downside for this OS again was that there used to be occasional BSODs(which means to say, not as frequent as the original Windows 98).

Windows ME:

This was supposedly an improved OS, borrowing features from Windows 98, and look and feel from Windows 2000 which was released around the same time. It was just the same old Windows 98 SE in a new package. Fine, some features were new - there was no support for real-time DOS, faster boot-up, games played a wee bit faster, some new inbuilt games were also provided. But there ends the goodies. The main aim of Microsoft was to provide a'stable' OS. Here again, you would feel, it had succeeded. But the bliss is only for a few days, after which it again reverts back to the same old story - BSODs, crashes, etc. I would not recommend using this OS at all.

Windows 2000:

This OS was released around the same time as Windows ME. But this differed from ME in being a network based OS, based on the Windows NT family of operating systems. Look and feel-wise, it is similar to other earlier versions of Windows. The OS as such is quite stable and does not crash as is the case with Windows 98/98 SE/ME. It has a lot of memory requirements though. So go for this OS only if you have at least 128 MB RAM in your system, besides a 1 GHz processor or better. This is a good OS to be used for servers.

Windows XP(Both Home and Professional):

This was the OS, released by Microsoft, which was meant for servers mainly, as well as stand-alone pc's or pc's in a network. Here the look and feel of the environment was totally changed, from the traditional Windows - even the start button was redesigned! The changes incorporated were really good and impressive. But, more importantly, this was the OS, where Microsoft got all their things right. The OS can run without any stability issues and crashes. There were a few security issues, but they have been addressed in the Service Packs(as usual!).  But the main point is that, after having installed Service Pack 2, the system is very secure and stable. I would absolutely recommend this OS to anyone, who has got at least a 1.3 GHz processor, 256 MB RAM and wants to go for Windows. Of course, the Windows XP Home Version is also good if you have a stand-alone machine - it has some lesser features, namely, Remote Registry, some network specific features, etc. All the other features remain the same. Windows XP Pro is also a very good OS if you have to use it as a server.