I don’t even know if they cared then. 7 only existed because Vista was an unusable nightmare for the first year and they had to do some damage control. They then followed 7 up with 8, an operating system where all early impressions and user testing indicated users would be bewildered and confused and they still pressed forward with it.
You could argue 3.11, 95,98,2000 releases were good, but beyond that Windows has been up and down with their releases.
Neither can I, but they were solid enough. A lot of people like to talk about how good XP was, but that is rose colored glasses and ignoring where OSX was at the same time, which, while not without issues, was a much more modern operating system.
Never mind the security issues of XP pre SP2. Antivirus software became commercial products because XP was so insecure.
You could argue 3.11, 95,98,2000 releases were good, but beyond that Windows has been up and down with their releases.