Was this peak Windows UI?

I would say so, but the Active Dekstop stuff wasn't the right move.

Fisher-price came next, with Windows XP. At least you could easily switch back to classic.

And then Windows 8, we won't even talk about that.

Maybe more importantly, Win2k was the first windows version actually WORKED in a predictable way after years of unstable post-Win3.1 (Win95 and onward) production releases.

Windows Vista / 7 was peak UI for me.

> I would say so, but the Active Dekstop stuff wasn't the right move.

Even so, you could completely ignore it if you wanted to!

The title bar of windows in Windows XP was Fisher-Price. But I thought the rest was OK.

I think Windows XP looks very nice if you install the Royale theme. It's a shiny and glassy version of the default XP style.

I really liked the luna silver and olive green themes. They were not too bad to look at.

Almost. The NT5 RCs, which became windows 2000, were better IMO - not massive differences but it hadn’t been slobbered upon by marketing yet.