> Windows XP was a much bigger deal than Windows 95, being the first consumer release based on the NT kernel
I hung on to 98 until 2001 for gaming, but at that point most stuff worked perfectly on 2k. While it wasn't intended for "home" users, 2k was the preferred OS among my group of friends until XPsp2 or so.
I really don't get why the NT kernel wasn't introduced to the "home" market until XP.
NT5/Windows 2000 was delayed by a couple years (supposedly due to the corporate networking stuff). The hardware was certainly ready for it by about 1998.
There was also a companion "Windows 2000 Home" edition announced, however it was rolled into XP while Windows ME was released as largely unwanted stopgap.
I was a big proponent of Windows 2000 as well. Though not marketed/positioned as such, it was really the start of the merging of the consumer and corporate OSes... based on NT kernel, but had support for DirectX and other APIs Microsoft never bothered to support in older NT releases.
I hung on to 98 until 2001 for gaming, but at that point most stuff worked perfectly on 2k. While it wasn't intended for "home" users, 2k was the preferred OS among my group of friends until XPsp2 or so.
I really don't get why the NT kernel wasn't introduced to the "home" market until XP.