Yes, I do admit it had its problems here and there, but Windows' biggest issues were more often due to cheap hardware with poorly-written drivers that were so easy to exploit security-wise long after the hardware itself was replaced.

Yes, I admit I hated Windows. I'll also admit that I used nearly every version of Windows from 3.0 through currently Win7 and I have Win8 in a virtual machine on my iMac right now--my 5-year-old iMac--and it's working fine. In almost every case where I've personally used Windows, it has been on better-than-average hardware and most lately on a solidly-reliable Mac computer from Apple. It's not my primary OS--almost never has been--but I will also admit that Windows tended to have the software I needed available even when the Mac OS didn't. A lot of that Windows-only requirement is subsiding as suitable and sometimes superior OS X software now competes and game creators are now supporting OS X as well as Windows.

No, with certain, limited, exceptions Windows itself has been better than its reputation--as long as it was kept clean and the user chose quality components. Apple's advantage throughout the last three decades is that they never permitted junk hardware in the first place.