NT4 was great. No, seriously, no blue text or anything. Then they gradually added a plethora of features and STUFF which, while useful and welcome in various circumstances, just made Windows Server more and more of a thickly woven jungle.

And therein lies my problem with Windows, especially the Server versions - it's become very feature rich, increasingly easy to use and maintain, however it just doesn't seem to do modular or (if you're particularly unlucky) will break in such an obscure way that you'll end up wanting to perform an exorcism.

I also get really annoyed at how things install - they spread tentacles into EVERYTHING which makes it pretty much impossible to figure stuff out. I get that on the other hand they're trying to make it piss easy to maintain, but it's not working.

Edit: having said all that, I've had relatively very few issues with 8.1, I actually like it, but I won't be touching 10 for a while. I'm quite keen on the whole Continuum idea though.