The 20 Worst Windows Features of All Time

You could make a case that Active Desktop (which originated as part of IE 4.0's Windows Desktop Update and became part of the OS with Windows 98) was a decent idea a decade too early. Part of the short-lived "push" fad of the mid-1990s, it piped Web content directly to your Windows wallpaper, where it would sit and auto-update itself. That's the same basic idea as current OS enhancers such as Yahoo Widget Engine, Apple's Dashboard, and, come to think of it, Vista's Gadgets. But in an era of slow PCs and even slower dial-up connections, Active Desktop was famous mostly for making Windows run like molasses.