A Walkthrough of the Startup Screens from Windows 1.0 to Vista

Tens of thousands of PC users see the Windows startup screen every time they turn on their computers. From 1985 to 2008, over a span of 24 years, what kind of visual journey have computer users experienced?

There are always people saying that this or that system from Microsoft is no good. Actually, these opinions are both right and wrong. After all, no technology can be perfected in one step (otherwise, we would now be traveling in flying saucers to make friends in outer space). From a slightly longer-term perspective, Windows has clearly been improving.

Even though many people criticize the failure of Windows ME, how does it compare to Windows 98? Many features built into ME were directly adopted by XP. Moreover, a lot of those criticizing ME are just repeating hearsay, assuming that since so many people criticize it, there must be a reason, and thus join in the criticism without ever having even seen what ME actually looked like.