3.11 Good
95 Bad
98 Good
Me Bad
XP Good
Vista Bad
7 Good
8 = ? ( BAD 
)
This might be a bit long, bit is nonetheless worth pointing out and explaining, I feel. I've always thought the whole "every two versions" thing was a load of complete tosh. Even this list has some glaring omissions. For example, if 3.11 was good, than by extension is the previous version- 3.1, bad? What made Windows 95 bad, when many people actually consider WIndows 95 better than Windows 98? Where is Windows 98SE in this? What about the NT lineup? Etcetera. I've just felt that that line of thinking just puts people at a predisposition for confirmation bias; just ignore those versions of windows that don't fit the pattern or come up with some otherwise arbitrary rule about what versions to include, and eventually you are going to create something with a discernable pattern. Let's look at each one in turn, and compare it to the previous.
Windows 95Win95 was a huge facelift to Windows. It introduced the start menu and also made itself a more permanent style of Operating System, in that while it, in many ways, did run on top of DOS, it no longer truly relied on it in many ways. Many of the paradigms- especially the start menu and Notification Area- that we still have today were birthed in Windows 95. It's weakness was with USB and it's implementation of plug & play, which to be fair was based on a as of yet incomplete spec that few understood and even fewer really cared about. At the time, many decried Windows 95 and swore to never switch from DOS and Windows 3.1 or 3.11 because Windows 95 was a memory hog and used too much disk space and required a faster CPU.
Windows 98Windows 98 is OK, but really, it's nothing more than Windows 95 with a few updated libraries and executables and Active Desktop installed. Very little, IMO, really sets 98 apart form 95 on a grand scale, certainly not enough to make it possible for 98 to be bad, but 98 to be good. At the time, many decried Windows 98 and swore to never switch from 95 because 98 was a memory hog and used too much disk space and required a faster CPU.
Windows MEI've yet to see any real evidence that Windows ME is a problematic OS. The only machines I've ever dealt with were in such a state of disrepair it would have been a miracle for any OS to not have problems. When the computer has sucked so much dust into it's vents you cannot even insert a floppy disk, I don't think it's really fair to blame the OS for problems. One big problem with ME was that it camr preinstalled on peoples machines, often with so much crap installed it's a wonder the machine can actually boot properly, let alone do anything. A Clean install of ME, something which very few detractors of the system have likely tried on reliable hardware, instead relying on things like "I cleaned a machine from a person that lives upstairs and it was slow and had ME on it, therefore Windows ME is bad" is certainly no worse than 98SE.
Windows XPWindows XP merged the NT and Consumer product lines, finally doing away with the aging pile of turd that was the 9x codebase. good riddance. It also added Luna themes and a myriad of graphical enhancements. At the time, many decried Windows XP and swore to never switch from 98 because XP was a memory hog and used too much disk space and required a faster CPU.
VistaVista was the big one. The giant marketing blunder. I'm not even really sure what happened, but somehow, Windows Vista managed to drag with it a cloud of hate and loathing Issues like the RTM copying problem didn't help matters. Many people decried, and still decry, Vista and swear to never switch from 98 because Vista uses more memory, disk space, and uses a faster CPU, as well as now making use of any existing GPU.
Windows 7Despite being little more than a few topical additions to Windows Vista, Windows 7 could be called a smash hit. The problem, of course, is that the similarities outweight the differences, and if A is similar to B and B is good, than surely A is good as well at least in some way.
Windows 8
Despite the "Evil Satanic OS" that is Vista, people are somehow clinging to Aero Glass, complaining that Windows 8 took it away; Windows 8 took away the start menu too, at least in part, but arguably, since the Start Menu was part of a "bad" OS, this should be considered a good change.
My point being that people will often reach a conclusion <before> considering facts, but this opens them up to confirmation bias. With a new OS, this is easy. Just ignore things that are improved and focus on this that are harder or have more problems. When you truly give the OS a chance- really embrace the new paradigm, sometimes you can be amazed at your increased productivity.
Comparison that is pretty similar. I installed Office 2013 recently, and it uses (even on WIn7) a very metro-like interface. I was used to Office 2003, so this was, at first, unfamiliar. However, I now have no problem navigating office to do most tasks, and spent more time actually working on writing rather then knee deep in Dialogs with a doze options on more than a dozen tabs.
