Windows 11 is the New XP (Premium)

20 years ago, Microsoft released a new version of Windows with a fresh new user interface that was built on the technical foundation laid by its predecessor. Sound familiar?

Look, I know that any Windows enthusiast who reads that headline is going to immediately judge it and then, in many cases, come up with some comparison they feel is more apt. That’s fine: That’s why we let people comment on the articles, here of course. But the more I think about it, the more this Windows 11/Windows XP comparison works.

To understand why it works so well, you have to remember how different things were in 2001. Microsoft had two Windows, one based on MS-DOS and one based on NT, and it had long planned to merge the two product lines, once it could figure out a way to use NT as the foundation of a system that also included the application and driver compatibility layers from the DOS-based Windows variants of the day.

Those efforts were to originally have culminated in Windows NT 5.0, which was quickly renamed by Microsoft marketing as Windows 2000 to drive home that fact. And while it is coincidental that I was so inspired by Microsoft plans for NT 5.0 that I started a little website called the Windows NT 5.0 SuperSite---later, the SuperSite for Windows---I also remember this time well.

And I have notes.

Windows NT 5.0---sorry, Windows 2000---would include the personalized menus from Office 2000, Internet Explorer 5.0, and “one-step sync” for mobile devices. It would be faster than the DOS-based Windows 98 on systems with 32 MB (yes, MB) or more RAM. It would equal Windows 98 in USB and general hardware compatibility (“it just works”), Plug ‘n’ Play (PnP), 1394 (Firewire), ACPI (power management), and DirectX 6 capabilities. And it exceeded 98 in its total cost of ownership (TCO), setup manager, sysprep capabilities, and so on. NT 5.0, we were told, would solve “DLL hell.”

NT 5.0 originally had a compelling consumer story, with its “auto-everything,” maintenance-free, and adaptive UI capabilities. Developer “richness” from the unification of the web and Win32 (which was reversed later), localization independence, and XML schemas (which would factor prominently in .NET and Longhorn later; in 1998, Microsoft did tell me it was “a key factor for the future”).

But Windows NT 5.0 would not provide a “UI shift,” and would instead bring forward the Windows 98 UI “with enhancements and simplification,” making it a “back to basics” release from a UI perspective.

Anyway, NT 5.0/2000 wasn’t the grand unification that Microsoft originally planned. And so, 18 months later, it released Windows XP---aka Windows NT 5.1---which shipped in both Home and Professional product versions, which could replace Windows 9x/Me and 2000, respectively. The foundation was there, from the NT-based side of the house, plus the driver and application compatibility models from 9x/Me. And, most crucially, there was a f...