Eastern bloc
It’s grim, it’s slow, everything’s badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I’m an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life. Charlie Brooker, Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse?
I quite liked Windows 2000 and Office 2000. They ran quick on my old Dell L400 - really squeezed every cycle out of the hardware – and the system was stable, really solid. Just not a good idea to connect this system to the Internet, but still a vast improvement over the Malignant Edition.
XP was slower, XP SP2 jogged rather than ran, XP SP 3 hobbled and didn’t like the graphics hardware. Debian is a bit like Windows 2000 on the old Dell, except you can connect it to the internet (even using a mobile phone modem).
Perhaps Brooker should try then hate Ubuntu as well? Or pay someone to manage his laptop? Or just get one of these? Set up the bluetooth and use the Google Documents extension and he is away – switches on in seconds, lasts months on a battery charge, and writing published online with a key stroke.
Via Daringfireball.