さあ、行くぞ

The last great Windows before Microsoft began its enshittification.

It was the last Windows version that felt it was primarily made for desktop use.

Windows 8 tried to be a hybrid between mobile operating system, and Windows 10 and onward feels more like an advertising platform for Office 365 and Microsoft’s AI services.
- Was 10 actually alright early on in its life, or was I just unaware? I don't remember any of the advertising and spyware crap back when I first upgraded from 7.
I would disagree. I feel xp was the last good windows. After that it all went to shit.
- You mean Windows 2000?
- Funny you say that. I did tech support when XP first came out, and I quit my job and switched to Linux.
  
  XP SP2 was actually pretty good though.
7 was the first and last version of Windows I didn't immediately despise.
Windows 7 made me switch to Linux ! I skipped over Visa entirely by using some obscure XP 64bit version for years. Then, 7 came out, and I was like "WTF is this crap ?". I was particularly infuriated by the complexity to setup network shares, you always had to navigate to some obscure menu to turn off some hidden "security" settings, but "media share" on he other hand, this shit was always ON even if nobody asked for it, or ever used it. Now I have to use Win11 at work. In retrospective, 7 wasn't so bad...
- I didn't mind 7, some things I even thought were great compared to XP (like the search).
  
  I can tolerate 10 well enough still given the de facto convenience of running windows for gaming, but the moment end of service comes around next year I'm switching to linux. I also have to use win 11 at work and it's just infuriating how much worse it is. And conveniently Linux gaming got pretty good in the meantime, and I've been told I can now even set up a windows VM with GPU passthrough that activates when I start the VM for the cases where Linux just won't work (though idk if that'll work when the issue is anticheat, but I don't play anything where that's relevant anyway).
- You may well be the only person on this planet who preferred Vista over 7.
i remember downgrading to windows 7 on my old laptop it orignally ran windows 7 as well in 2019 bcs windows 10 was slow for it

maybe fun fact: they also had a anime girl for windows 7 in japan to promote its release

Similarly, AMD had a couple of anime girl mascots for Zen/Ryzen.
- Simiarly Microsoft also had anime girl mascots for windows 8, 8.1 and 10 as well

That guy looks his parents were Tom Scott and Shayne Topp

Isn't that Linus?
- Lmao and I said "that guy". I blame the low quality picture! XD
- It is

Anyone else read PC magazines about Windows 95 on the school bus every day? In anticipation? Normal kid stuff.. right?

Dude! 256 colors!
Radio Shack catalogs for me. I was/am an electronics engineering nerd.

So your post title is "Here we go"(?)

What does the kanji say under Windows 7? Is it just kanji for "Windows 7?"

You bastard, I've been trying to keep on the dl here, but I just can't resist:

発売
はつばい
hatsubai
sale offering, release sale
- You're not OP, and only two of the characters appear to be what is displayed.
  
  What you seem to have linked are the words, "first release", but I'm uncertain if the characters for "first" are even depicted in the picture.
  
  Edit: You are correct. I'm the luckiest bastard ever.
- Well it says ついに発売
  
  Put it together it more or less means "(Windows 7) has finally been released/started sale"

I love this as just a completely out-of-context picture.

guy behind the counter looks so fed up with the horrid windows aura