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Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch
(www.theregister.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
XP was the first one that had proper memory protection so that badly written programs would just crash instead of taking down the whole system.
It was a dramatic step forward compared to 98, where you'd be lucky to go a whole day without bluescreening. There's a reason XP hung on for so long. It was the first Windows version that was really good enough for most people.
It was the first commercial version, from the NT line that was user-friendly and capable enough for home users. Prior to that, it was difficult to get games to run on the NT line and permissions were more complicated than most home users wanted to deal with. After that, they were essentially the same product line.