Yeah, it was that. Win7 became stable but kept some or all of the Vista bloat, but people noticed less because PCs were faster by then. I barely use Windows but could see XP as the best-ever version of it if they'd kept it up to date.
Windows XP was when they started putting the activation bullshit in, which was just a little too much for privacy-brained me. I had migrated to Linux pretty much exclusively by then.
