2001 was a busy year, Apple was poppin' off Napster and Sega, meanwhile threw in their
respective towels, we got three new game consoles, one from a brand new challenger, scientists
found this little guy, and America had her worst day ever.
And for those of us who still remember all of that, Windows XP holds a special place
in our hearts. But was it really that good?
Or was it just better than the Millennium Edition and Vista Dumpster Fires that Book
ended in? To find out, we gathered some of our young and young at heart friends to see if they
could navigate Microsoft's most iconic Windows ever.
There's lots more where that came from, but before we get to it, there's one more thing
that came out in 2001. This segue, well not this one exactly, one like it, whoa does this thing even work?
We're still gonna get to our sponsor though. Windows XP was chock full of important milestones.
It was the first consumer version of Windows to be based on the more stable NT kernel.
It was the first to require Microsoft product activation online, and it was the first major
overhaul of the start menu since it was introduced back in Windows 95.
It was also the first Windows to use graphical effects like alpha compositing and drop shadows
to pretty up the interface, and it introduced clear type for better readability on LCD
displays, which were just starting to approach affordability for the home user.
There were also big changes to the control panel, Windows Explorer, networks and internet
connectivity, multi-language support and multimedia tools, many of which have changed a fair bit
since then. So let's see if our test subjects are able to navigate our challenges.
I'm Katie and I'm 18 years old. I am McIntyre and I am 17 years old.
Ah hi, I'm Elijah, junior writer here. I am 26 years old and I have actually never used Windows XP.
I've never even used Windows 7. Whoa, Windows XP is running on this display.
Man, I haven't used this since like 2001.
I remember it was my favorite operating system all the way until probably Windows 10.
You know, the funny thing is it actually looks really alike. Like Windows hasn't actually changed all that much.
Wow, the local area connection with the little two monitors or whatever.
Oh my God, I forgot all about this stuff. Oh my God.
Control panel? The good one? Oh, I can't search anymore.
No. I have to actually hit the search button. I want you to set up the screen saver.
What is it? Can I search for it? Let's try.
What was it called again? Holy pictures. Oh gosh, this is bad.
Oh my. Oh my gosh, it's right there. Oh, that one for sure.
Oh my God, I forgot about all the screen savers. Oh, where's the like pipes? 3D pipes.
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
3D pipes. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. There's like all the pipes. Yeah.
Alright, well, properties, obviously. Desktop, screensaver. Wait, does this have the pipes? Hell, yeah.
There you go. It has been applied. I think it's the first person to go to properties to do that.
Uh oh. Where did everyone else go? Oh, it was the control panel.
The dog. I forgot about the dog. I remember Merlin.
Yeah, Merlin was dope. Oh, the dog!
I forgot about the dog! I remember Merlin. Yeah, Merlin was dope.
Who else, Courtney, Earl. I don't remember Courtney or Earl.
I mostly just remember Merlin and Rover. 100% using Merlin.
Switch. Why didn't he switch? Oh, he's going away. And then he comes in!
What an animation. Oh my God. Probably my favorite thing that I used to do in XP
was turn everything off so that I could get higher FPS in half-life
and Counter-Strike.
I took it sweet time. All right, my CD's in.
Now we need to open it. Does this thing even open? I don't even think I've ever even touched one of these things.
I'm trying not to break it. I have no clue.
Okay, now I've just gotten a bunch of options of different audio.
I can play the audio, copy it,
play it from different, I think, apps, I think. I don't know how to do it.
No, there's no copy. This is enable and disable selected tracks.
Is there anything... Proper?
Um... Oh yeah, copy music is there. Oh, there, okay.
Oh, this'll be easy. I want track one
and I want track six and I want track nine.
Let's do one and 24.
Wait, now the 24 is gone. Okay, this makes no sense.
Okay, now they're all gone. Now they're all unchecked. What?
Oh, I can hear it. It's, oh, the high pitch is actually really annoying.
It's doing some sort of coil wine of some sort. Well, it sounds like coil wine.
I don't know if it's actually coil wine, but like, it's that type of sound.
Is it done? Holy crap, this takes forever.
I could probably Google this CD faster on YouTube.
Go to a youtube.mp3ripper. Don't do that, by the way.
And then rip it faster than this. This is crazy.
Hey, I got my three songs. All right, good work.
Now, I want you to make an audio CD with those tracks.
Insert blank C, okay. Well, conveniently, there's a blank CD right here.
It's a CD. Do they?
Oh. Okay, now it's copying to the CD. Nice.
First one's done. This is mine.
There we go. This is 1516.
Okay. So, oh yeah.
Sweet. I got my own CD now.
No, it's not click and drag. Oh, copy. Insert blank CD.
I did.
Huh? They look the exact fucking same. What do you mean look closer at the drives?
One says LG. One says DVD. Is it because this one says Secure Disc?
Or a Supermulti? Yeah, the Supermulti's what you're asking.
Okay, copy. Holy.
This is the past version. That's crazy to me. Dude, this would drive me,
like if my Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer was acting this slow,
I would immediately be reinstalling. I'd be like, something's wrong. I forgot how long you'd put a CD in
and you'd like rip it and then you'd walk away for a while because it actually takes some time.
What a process. We just don't even do this anymore. Wow, I get to open it.
I get the privilege. Sheesh.
Amazing.
Smells like 2000, baby. Which one's what?
It should say all of them. Select the programs you want to install.
Oh, I see it. Okay, okay.
Oh, there it goes. It's installing. Insert Microsoft Suite Disk 2
and then why does it ask me to do Disk 2?
Yeah, back in the day, and this is after floppies too
because you used to have to do this with floppies as well where you'd get like a stack of floppies
and then you'd install them disk by disk. And then CDs came out
and they could hold a lot more information and that was great, but you still had to do a lot of things one by one.
I remember installing Diablo 2 and you could skip part of the install
but you wouldn't get the cinematics because they were all on like Disk 3 or whatever.
All right, let's see if this just auto launches. It did set up. Wow.
This may take several minutes. That's very true. It would take even longer if it was on a hard drive,
which everyone had back then.
All programs. Holy crap. This is the worst organization
I've ever seen in my entire life.
Could not find streets and trips on this machine. Oh, disk on this machine.
Oh, do I need to? Oh, okay.
What the hell is the point of installing the program if I have to reinsert the disk anyways?
So it'll install what it needs to run.
The problem with that is the one with CDs. Oh.
Is that just because like people didn't have hard drives like big enough back then?
Probably? In a lot of cases, yeah. Okay.
We did it. Wait, how do I move? Oh God, I just,
Oh, I can search. Linus. Nope, that wouldn't work.
Cause it's,
What's our address? Right here would be the office.
Yeah, it does not look like this. I found the office. Let's go.
All right. Now let's Doc's Linus. His exact address is no.
I want to go cheatcc.com, cheat code central. Because back then you could actually cheat NVIDIA games
without like hacking. Wow, member of the week, this guy. I don't know who he is, but sure.
Oh my God. Gamecube free CCC email, DVD, PlayStation, codes.
You go to codes and you'd find codes and you'd enter them in. You'd have to search by, oh my God, you'd search.
You'd be like, I want to play, I want the Crash Bandicoot cheat codes
and then you'd scroll down. Oh yeah, cool borders four.
Man, this sucks. Is this because we're using web archive
or is this how long it would take to load a website back then?
A little call of B, a little call of B. Okay. There's an Athlon XP-1800.
Is that, oh, and a motherboard. So that's a combo.
160 CAD for a motherboard CPU combo.
That's pretty good. A broadband router.
60 gig hard drive, 140 Canadian dollars.
Do you want to not be able to install the newest Call of Duty?
Here's $140. Have a good day.
That's crazy. Did you play a lot of pinball? Nope.
Played once in an arcade machine in a bowling alley, but that's about it.
This was like the hot new game machine out with this version of Windows.
Yeah, that's pretty sad. I was ready. Yeah.
I got a new computer. You want to play pinball with me? Here we go.
He's right here. Or is this a girl?
Why'd you hit her? No, I didn't hit her.
I'm right where the arrow, oh yeah, now I hit her. My bad.
Yo, GT83, no, Max Payne. I love Max Payne.
Yo, I want, what's this monitor? Is it 1920? Hell yeah.
I want anti-aliasing off, yeah.
High settings, everything's on high. Let's see how this game runs, baby.
Oh, dude, this is like 30, 60.
Oh God, my frame's dropped. What? Oh God, there's another one.
So. Oh.
Dude, this game is sick, man. It makes me respect where we're at now
for operating systems, I think. Like even just the simple things,
like hitting Windows in search or the load times for things.
You know, as much as I reminisce
and like to think I miss XP,
it's really easy to just fly through Windows 11. There's a lot of like sub menus
that I originally was like, oh, why'd they get rid of all these? But once you get used to it, it's so much faster.
Looking back then, Windows XP really was a huge step
in the path toward modern Windows. 95 and 98 deserve some credit.
They had vastly more usable interfaces than what came before them,
but they did nothing to solve the issues that were inherent with the DOS-based reality
that was behind the curtains. 2000 addressed a lot of the stability
and security concerns thanks to its business grade
NT kernel, but it was only intended for business users
and was priced to match. So it fell to XP to bring those benefits
to the average user. And aside from just stability,
there are glimpses of the future all over Windows XP.
The start menu moved away from the monolithic all programs list
in favor of highlighting your most used app. It had improved search,
meaning you didn't have to go digging for things quite so often. And it had improved networking and internet features
that were central to ushering in the always connected world we live in now,
where most of what we do on a computer is in a web browser,
say with Wikipedia, rather than load it
onto our machine with a disk like Microsoft and Karta.
Speaking of mind blowing things, this will probably blow our younger viewers' minds,
but thumbnails, slideshows, and the task pane,
those didn't exist before Windows XP. And while Auto Run wasn't new,
there was finally enough functionality in the operating system and bundled apps
for it to be genuinely useful, as we saw in our music ripping
and our disk burning challenges. So XP, you know what?
You stood up to the test of time, even if your usability could have been a little better.
Just like this segue could have been a little better to our sponsor.
If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out the one where we had young people try Windows 95.
They struggled even more.