What were Schumacher's best years?

I've been interested to read some of the comments about Michael Schumacher following on from my post the other day.

Some of you have got into a debate about what were Schumacher's best years and it struck me that we should enlarge that debate.

There are several phases to choose from; the early Benetton years where he challenged Senna, won in his first full season aged 23 and won two world titles and 19 victories.

Then there were the hungry years at Ferrari from 1996 to 1999, where the title eluded him but he had some amazing races. He won 16 times during these years.

The 2000 to 2004 seasons where he finally won the title for Ferrari and then went on to be more or less unbeatable were the most successful, obviously with 49 wins.

And then there were the two odd seasons in 2005 and 2006, the final years with eight wins and one final tilt at the title against younger opposition.

I'd be interested to know what people think.

Just to be clear on one thing from my post last week: when I was talking about how in the Ferrari days he was able to get everything how he wanted it, with loads of testing and tyres that he could develop, I wasn't suggesting that this is why he was successful in his first career. He would have been successful anyway.