Top 10 best releases from Microsoft

2. Windows NT 4.0
Iain Thomson: Windows NT 4.0 was Microsoft at its best, and it's still its only system that IT administrators can talk about with genuine pleasure.

It was a system built by techies for techies. Admittedly Windows 2000 took the software to new levels, but NT was the system that IT administrators of my era love to talk about, both with affection and a small amount of malice.

NT was a boon to running an office. For the first time it made running a large number of clients in an office easy - not as easy as some would have liked but a hell of a lot better than things had been before. Windows 2000 was flashier but, for those schooled on a command line interface, it was the first GUI-based system that actually worked.

Shaun Nichols: One of the smartest things Microsoft ever did was fold Windows NT into the regular operating system in Windows 2000.

NT was everything other versions of Windows were not: it was far more stable, practical and easier to administer than any previous version of Windows had been. As Iain noted, it was also a darling of system administrators, and it's a safe bet that many IT departments still speak reverently of Windows NT.

NT was also Microsoft's foray into a market that had previously been occupied by Unix. It was designed to be the enterprise complement to the Windows 9x family. To that end, you can make a solid case that NT is also a precursor to the Windows Server family.

Given that Microsoft simply isn't Microsoft without the two versions of Windows, I don't think it's a stretch to say that NT was the most important family of Windows, perhaps ever, and as the most famous edition NT 4.0 gets top billing.

1. Windows Update
Shaun Nichols: It's rare for a software vendor to get an application completely right the first time out. Errors get overlooked, vulnerabilities go unnoticed and compatibility issued get pointed out with every product. Microsoft seems to have a certain knack for putting out products that need a few revisions to really hit their stride.

Aside from that, Microsoft products are by far the most popular targets in the world for malware attacks. With the overwhelming majority of users running the company's products, a Windows or Office attack is far and away the best method for infecting a lot of users.

These two factors combined make it of vital importance that the company had an efficient method for distributing patches and updates. And with Windows 98, the company delivered what might have been the most important pieces of security software since Dr. Soloman first bundled his anti-virus tools.

Windows Update allows the company to automatically send out updates to users with minimal effort on the consumer's part. Vital updates and patches are downloaded automatically and installed quickly.

While this seems boring, imagine a world without it. Users would be forced to download updates from a web site or launch an updater application, and many systems would remain unpatched for years at a time. Malware writers would be like lions in a petting zoo.

Iain Thomson: We argued about this one a lot, and it says much about Microsoft's products that this got the number one spot. but while Windows Update is good news for consumers I wonder whether IT administrators like it quite as much.

As Shaun pointed out, malware writers love Windows because it's a huge target. Back in the day when malware writers worked for kudos not money, Microsoft was a high value target, but the monetisation of malware has made it even more so. So now Microsoft pushes fixes down to users rather than waiting for them to be installed.

This is a great boon to the non-technical user who makes up the vast majority of Microsoft's user base. But for IT administrators it's a less clear cut option. While patching is the aim, IT staff generally like to test patches first to make sure they don't crash the system. I know of a couple of instances where patches have caused huge problems with legacy software.

That said, Windows Update remains a really useful idea, and one that other software companies are also using. If you have a Mozilla browser you get sent updates automatically, for example. It's a good system and something we need to see more of.