“Windows XP was the best . . .”
As good as it was, I think Win 2K was better. Before the 6 service packs, it was very fast and the OS only used 35 MEGabytes. After installing the 6th service pack, it used about the same memory as XP and slowed to about the same speed, but it couldn’t do as much. I think MS wanted to cripple it to sell the newer and much shinier XP.
Yep, they’ve done that repeatedly. The hardest thing MS has had to do is kill off their successful products to be able to sell the next release.