Windows 7 was the peak.
This is not 'things were better when you were fifteen.' I started on Apple fucking II. I remember Windows 95 being new and fancy, and even that 90 MHz 16 MB ass DOS extension of an operating system had better UI and better UX than Windows 10 or 11. 98 was an improvement, NT was a tradeoff, ME was a mistake, XP was a lurching step forward, service packs can burn in hell, Vista doubly so. Windows 7 was the last time the good-bad-good-bad cycle actually worked out. 8 was bad, trying to be a touchscreen OS, and then 8.1 was a band-aid instead of a real fix, and everything since WIndows 10 has been a deliberate disaster. 'We're gonna screenshot your desktop every few seconds because--' Die.