Windows XP was released to manufacturing a quarter of a century ago

It is a quarter of a century since Microsoft packed Windows XP off to manufacturing, finally drawing a line under the Windows 9x codebase (behind Windows 95, 98, and Me) and making Windows NT something for consumers. Before Windows XP, consumers and businesses lived in two different software worlds. XP was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, succeeding Windows 2000 for professionals and Windows ME (Millennium Edition) for home users. Compared to Windows ME, XP was rock solid (although, to put things in perspective, compared to Windows ME, an elephant perched on a traffic cone is rock solid.) Codenamed Whistler, the operating system marked the start of Microsoft's relentless tinkering with the Start Menu it introduced in Windows...

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