As a 28-year-old, Windows XP is the operating system I grew up on. I had a Compaq desktop PC for the family way back then, and I certainly have a lot of fond memories of this machine, particularly playing games like Rollcage, which I still love to this day. But it's been a long time since I used it, and while I do love a lot of what Windows XP did, I can't say I've really had the urge to go back.

Just for fun, though, I decided to run Windows XP on a virtual machine to see what it's like. Now, I didn't try to use it for actual work or anything, as I know most of today's web probably wouldn't even work, but I was curious to see what the operating system itself feels like today. I can't say it's making me wish Windows XP was still supported, but there are some elements I kind of like more in Windows XP than in Windows 11.

Windows XP was very loud

Was this really necessary?

The first thing that strikes me every time I boot up my Windows XP VM is the login sound. For a while in later versions of Windows, Microsoft removed the startup sound entirely, but there's a little bit of a jingle again in Windows 11. And I apologize to any big fans of Windows XP's startup sound, but did it really need to be this loud to let me know the computer has turned on? Realistically, there's not even a use for it, and while I can understand wanting a little bit of fun in your PC, this is just too much. The startup sound on Windows 11 does the same job just as well, and it's so much softer.

But that's not all. What I find even more jarring are the sounds every time you navigate to a different folder in File Explorer (or Windows Explorer). Every click is accompanied by a similar clicking sound that is totally unnecessary. I'm glad I wasn't using this PC for work, because hearing that sound every time I open a folder would have gotten old very quickly.

And yes, I know there's probably a way to turn off these sounds. I'm not writing a review of Windows XP, I'm evaluating the experience users would have out of the box.

Taskbar buttons are much better now

The Quick Launch bar doesn't make a lot of sense anymore

A small thing that I feel Windows does much better nowadays and that will probably be controversial is how the taskbar is handled. Back in Windows XP, apps on the taskbar would still be labeled and each instance of an app would be shown separately until there was no more space. Now, apps are collapsed into a simple icon, which automatically combines all instances of the app. The old layout was still available until Windows 11 (and eventually restored in that version as well), but as much as people seem to want that old method back, I find the new layout much more efficient and clean.

More importantly, though, the taskbar in Windows XP didn't allow you to pin items to it. Instead, Microsoft would let you pin app icons to a Quick Launch toolbar, which also lived in the taskbar. It may sound similar, but today, a pinned icon doubles as the shortcut to restore an open app, because when you open it, that indicator is simply added to the icon. Back then, if you clicked a Quick Launch icon, it would then add the app window to the taskbar as well. It just felt like an inefficient solution, and as a kid, i actually wasn't totally sure what the Quick launch icons were for. Today's implementation is better overall.

The Start menu was worse... and better?

Less flexibility, but there are some perks

The Start menu is one of the areas that has changed the most since Windows XP. Conceptually, it's kind of the same thing, but overall, the latest iterations are better in most ways. For one thing, the Windows XP menu had very limited space for pinned apps, so most of the time, you'd have to be doing some navigation to get to the apps you want. The pinned area in Windows 11's Start menu has a lot more space (and Windows 10 was even better in this regard).

Windows XP also lacked some customizability here. While you could add or remove apps from the primary list, the system shortcuts on the right side couldn't be configured, so if you didn't need all those options, you'd be out of luck.

That being said, I think I have to say I kind of like the way Windows XP presented almost everything on your computer directly in the Start menu. The All programs list didn't require an extra click to open, and it appeared very quickly. The options shown were also very compact, so you could get a better idea of everything that's on your system much more quickly. Windows 11 forces you to click to see the all apps list, scroll a bunch, and then potentially have to click again to open a program's folder or something. While the Windows 11 interface works better for touch, I really appreciate the speed and quick usability of the Windows XP menu.

The File Explorer, too

I actually have similar feelings with File Explorer as well. The latest versions, in my opinion, are the best at giving you the tools you need at a quick glance, so you can easily create a new folder, delete a file, and so on. Plus with the addition of a navigation tree and tabs, it's simply far better to manage files these days.

However, while using Windows XP, I did notice something interesting. When I opened the My Music folder, File Explorer had a set of actions on the side that were specifically tailored to music, like a Play all button. It's kind of interesting Microsoft decided to do away with these smart actions based on file types, since I think they would probably be pretty useful. There's plenty of space in the toolbar for it, too.

Customization was different

Only a few colors and themes to choose from

I mentioned customization for the Start menu already, but in general, I actually think Windows XP doesn't provide a whole lot in terms of options for customizing how things look. Or rather, there aren't options that don't come with big drawbacks. In fact, you have a ton of options for choosing the color of window title bars (both active and inactive), including gradients, you can change the font color in message boxes, border color, and much more. It's all pretty cool, until you realize this all requires you to use the Windows Classic theme, which already looked outdated back then.

If you want to use the much nicer Windows XP theme, you have three options for colors, and that's about it.

These days, Windows can only use one general theme color, which is kind of a downside, but also ensures things look much more consistent. More importantly though, there are no big sacrifices to using color. You can change the color of the taskbar, active window borders, links in apps, and other general highlights and it all works with the same modern design Windows 11 brought to the table.

High contrast themes were also pretty ugly back then, since they also forced the Windows classic theme and the themes that actually provided high contrast didn't look great. Windows 11 today has some nice accessibility themes that may still be a bit jarring at first, but the OS is much more adapted to be easily readable without having to look so ugly.

I feel like these limitations are partly what made apps like WindowBlinds much more necessary for some people. These days, it's much harder to recommend, but if you wanted to spruce up your Windows XP PC, WindowBlinds had some really cool options to break free of the shackles of the default themes.

Of course, Windows 11 has also lost a lot, like a resizable taskbar or the ability to drag said taskbar to any place on the screen. But that's not enough to make it a worse experience than XP in my opinion.

Window management is so much better now

Snap Assist is one feature I can't live without

The biggest takeaway whenever I use Windows XP, or any version prior to Windows 10, is how much more difficult multitasking was in previous versions. It's always a huge disappointment when I can't drag a window to one side of the screen to have it automatically take up half of it, or drag it to the top to make it full screen. And that's to say nothing of all the goodies added in Windows 10, like how it would take the current sizes of your apps so when you drag another app over the current layout, it will take the same space, rather than resizing it to the default size.

And then there's Snap Layouts, which have all new ways to fit windows into the spaces you want and switch between groups of apps more easily. There's been so much work to make Windows better at multitasking, and for me, it's become a huge chore to use any old version of Windows as a result.

There's much more, too

I could go on a while longer with differences between Windows XP and Windows 11, but I wanted to stick to my most notable impressions from a relatively quick hands-on. Plus, some things are hard to really experience these days when you're just running Windows XP in a virtual machine. But installing drivers is a good example of something that could be very tedious. Back then, it felt like almost every device had to come with a disc for drivers, because getting on the internet or using generic drivers really wouldn't work for most devices. Driver installation has been heavily simplified these days, which is something we kind of take for granted.