宝宝不愿告别母乳？六个步骤教你如何应对断奶期

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.

This is what Windows XP actually looks like for those who, like myself, are fortunate enough not to have seen it for many years.

Credit: OriginalGamer

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.