After over three decades of Microsoft Windows success, there have been some clear failures along the way. With that in mind, we’ve picked the six worst versi*** of Windows. All of these made us want to stick to older, better versi*** of Windows, or use alternatives like Macs or Linux instead.

排名標準

當我們看到一個壞版本的Windows時，我們大多數人都知道它。也許我們在與它的錯誤搏鬥中經歷了個人的痛苦，或者一次又一次地重新安裝它浪費了時間，或者聽過關於它崩潰頻率的故事。

在開發這個列表時，我們考慮了以下指標：人們對每個版本的厭惡程度（出現在其他最差的列表中）、它的銷售情況、採用的速度、它的評論有多差、它在市場上的使用壽命以及我們自己對軟體的體驗。為了好玩，我們還搜尋了“Windows[x]糟糕透了”，並統計了結果。

老實說，這沒有什麼科學依據，所以你可能不同意我們的確切排名，但我們可以自信地預測：如果你至少運行了其中一個版本的Windows，你就想升級。

為了簡單起見，我們將堅持使用Windows的完整桌面版本（除了基於ARM的繞道之外），因此更多晦澀難懂的伺服器和PDA版本將免於羞辱（目前）。

#6: Windows 1.01 (1985)

Windows 1.0 might rank high in terms of importance (for, well, being the first-ever version of Windows), but it was a stinker in the marketplace. Unlike Macs that were built from the ground-up with hardware optimized to use a mouse-and-GUI interface, IBM PCs had to rely on kludgy software tricks to even begin to approach doing the same thing.

As a result, Windows 1.0 pushed the limits of a typical 1985 PC’s capabilities at the time, making it a memory hog that was too slow to use. In 1986, The New York Times reviewed Windows 1.0 and wrote that “running Windows on a PC with 512K of memory is akin to pouring molasses in the Arctic.” Add in poor third-party support, and you had a true dud.

Luckily for Microsoft, things got better: The average PC became powerful enough to handle Windows **oothly by the early 1990s.

RELATED: 35 Years of Microsoft Windows: Remembering Windows 1.0

#5: Windows XP (Initial Release, 2001)

Sure, after all the fixes, Windows XP was one of the greatest versi*** of Windows of all time. But some of you might remember what XP was like before 2004’s Service Pack 2 release: a buggy mess with driver problems and huge security holes.

There were also growing pains for Windows XP’s brand new activation system, which was a first in Windows at the time. To prevent piracy, Microsoft required customers who built their own machines or upgraded to activate their copy of Windows XP over the internet or by telephone. If you made significant changes to your computer’s hardware (such as installing a new hard drive or graphics card), Windows XP would require reactivation, which caused no shortage of headaches for some people in an era when always-on internet wasn’t a given.

Luckily, Microsoft continued to refine XP for years, and it eventually became a solid, stable OS that many were hesitant to give up. The release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 was a pivotal moment that made the operating system much more secure.

RELATED: Windows XP Users: Here Are Your Upgrade Opti***

#4: Windows RT (2012)

Microsoft crafted Windows RT as an ARM-based version of Windows that would run on a new class of lighter, more power-efficient machines like the Surface RT. There was only one problem: It couldn’t run milli*** of Windows apps designed for Windows’ traditional x86 architecture. And most of the Windows 8-specific apps in the Windows Store at the time weren’t very good.

Even worse, it teased full desktop support with a desktop mode that would only allow Microsoft desktop apps such as Microsoft Office. Third-party apps were forbidden, even if recompiled for ARM. In the end, RT was more than just an embarras**ent: The failure of Windows RT and the accompanying Surface RT hardware led to a $900 million loss for Microsoft in 2013.

RELATED: What Is Windows RT, and How Is It Different from Windows 8?

#3: Windows 8 (2012)

Windows 8 was a daring business move on Microsoft’s part. It saw the challenge to PCs posed by Apple’s iPhone and iPad (year-over-year PC sales began to drop in 2011) and decided to tackle it head-on with a crossover OS that could handle both touchscreens and desktop PCs.

Unfortunately, Microsoft got a little too enthusiastic with its new strategy, forcing its core customer base of desktop PC users to compromise their productivity for a new touchscreen-first interface called Metro. It was a great interface for tablets, but not for desktops.

In fact, Windows 8 treated the desktop windows experience as an afterthought: The OS booted into the Start screen by default and hid the “Desktop” behind an icon. Once you got to the desktop, there was no Start menu, and there were annoying hot corners. If you left your mouse in the upper-right corner of the screen for a moment, a Charms bar would pop up.

Ultimately, Windows 8 was an all-out bet on mobile-first that didn’t pay off. The reviews for it were di**al, and Microsoft backpedaled hard, first with Windows 8.1, and then with Windows 10. Throughout, many users simply stuck with Windows 7 or even jumped ship to Macs.

RELATED: Why I Still Use Windows 7 After a Year of Trying to Like Windows 8

#2: Windows Vista (2006)

After the great success of Windows XP, Windows Vista was a fiasco. The shiny new OS came in six confusing editi*** (Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate), dicing the market into a salad and confusing customers.

One of the earliest complaints about Vista was that it ran sluggishly on machines that performed very well with XP. It was also a memory hog. This was partly thanks to its flashy new translucent Aero interface and always-running gadgets, which taxed graphics capabilities, memory, and CPU power.

Then there were puzzling annoyances that had been meant to help, but that actually just got in the way. Case in point: The dreaded User Account Control (UAC) prompts that would pop up every few minutes to cover the screen whenever you actually tried to do something with your computer. Luckily, it was possible to turn them off with some tinkering, but what was Microsoft thinking?

In the end, we can thank Vista’s plentiful failures for the glory of Windows 7, which fixed Vista’s problems while retaining its advancements.

RELATED: 4 Ways to Make UAC Less Annoying on Windows 7 / Vista

#1: Windows Millennium Edition (2000)

Initially, Microsoft meant for Windows 98 to be the last OS based on the legacy MS-DOS kernel, but the firm realized that it didn’t have time to finish preparing an NT-based Windows for c***umers. The result was Windows Millennium Edition, or “Windows Me” for short.

What was wrong with Windows Me? Well, chief among the problems was that many people found that it crashed—and it crashed a lot. To our knowledge, no one has ever explained exactly why Me was more unstable than the already unstable Windows 98, but we suspect that it was due to bugs that were introduced when Microsoft hastily added new features to Me without proper testing.

There were other issues, too: Programs running on Me tended to produce lots of memory leaks, which could cause crashes as well. The included System Restore utility didn’t work properly at first. And Me removed MS-DOS Real mode, which was necessary for some legacy programs to work, especially late-era MS-DOS games from the mid-1990s, which many PC users still played at the time.

To add insult to injury, Microsoft already had the answer up its sleeve: Windows 2000, which was stable and glorious. Sure, it lacked the flashy c***umer bells and whistles, but it could have done the trick. Instead, Microsoft punted the ball with Me, and only began to rebound with Windows XP in 2001 (which initially had its own share of problems, as we covered above).

RELATED: Windows Me, 20 Years Later: Was It Really That Bad?

Honorable Mention: Windows 10 (2015)

對於windows10來說，這是一條崎嶇不平的路。它的問題包括：內建廣告、免費遊戲、強制更新、資料收集和隱私問題，以及將四代Windows的點點滴滴融合到一個產品中的弗蘭肯斯坦（Frankenstein）外觀和感覺，微軟仍在努力完善這個產品。

Windows10因提供了出色的桌面體驗而獲得高分，但它在觸控式螢幕上的表現卻比Windows8差。說到windows8，微軟跨越了兩種軟體架構：UWP和遺留的Win32平臺。在想要拋棄Windows10在高DPI模式下執行不佳的傳統Win32應用程式，但保持其龐大的安裝基礎之間，Windows10既不存在也不存在。

對於Windows 10，有時難以理解的更新永遠不會結束。微軟不斷地擺弄新功能，在孤立應用程式和實用程式的同時關閉和開啟它們。並且至少還有兩種不同的方式（控制面板和設定）來配置系統。Windows10感覺就像是一段栓在這裡和那裡的程式碼，沒有巨集偉的視野將它們結合起來。

這些年來，我們得到了很多關於Windows10的評論，讓我們知道很多人真的，真的不喜歡它的很多方面。

所以，儘管Windows10在很多方面都是最偉大的Windows版本之一，但它也可能成為其他方面最糟糕的版本之一。如果有Windows11，我們希望它能在不破壞一切的情況下（比如Vista和Windows8）的情況下重新開始。未來等待！

相關：如何禁用所有Windows10的內建廣告