What was Microsoft thinking when it released Windows Millenium Edition????

[dullard]

This is what I always thought (I heard it on all the major news stations, such as CNN):

Windows was in the middle of a monopoly lawsuit (Netscape suing over Windows including Microsoft Explorer in the OS). One of the major claims the government used to show that Windows was a monopoly was that no new Windows OS had been released in years and yet Microsoft was still charging an arm and a leg for Windows 98. The result: Microsoft rushed out Win ME and the government backed down on that argument. Sadly that meant Win ME didn't have enough product testing to get most of the bugs out - and it is a piece of garbage. And Microsoft was delcared a monopoly anyways.

Thoughts?

 

[Cerb]

A friend of mine got a laptop w/ it...he ordered 2k Pro, and got the CD eventually, but ugh...he couldn't even open IE and control panel at the same time...from the factory!
That's my experience with ME. That was enough to keep me off the 9x OSes in general (Hell, NT4 did that!), and since XP was on the way, 98SE had practically matured...it served no purpose.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: fivespeed5
someone care to explain what is wrong with WinME?

Take the instability and other oddities of all the Win9x OSes.
Now put them into one OS and proclaim that it is better than 98SE (98SE could be screwed up w/ too much on it, but if you were careful, it was fine).
You have WinME.

 

[Mean MrMustard]

Win 2000 SP3 0wns

 

[fs5]

wow.. WinME seems the same as 98SE to me. I had an equal number of problems ini 98 as in ME.

 

[sharkeeper]

Remember those retail kiosks that said "Take ME home!"?

Good target practice...


Not to mention the really corny everything ME...

They should've had a version of Office called Kill. Kill ME.

-DAK-

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
ummmm... if its not money then... maybe to get morons to not buy win2k?

Sounds right to me.

 

[ragazzo]

winme was released at a time when lots of peeps were starting to oc like mad and that's why it was so unstable.


just kidding.

 

[tcsenter]

Windows ME works great.....after:

- disabling the infernal System Restore
- deleting PCHealth and StateMgr Registry entries from the 'RUN' section
- upgrading the "ME" version of MSIE 5.5 to the release version of MSIE 5.5SP2
- applying the Windows 'critical' updates (IE cumulative patches and MSJVM updates)
- gathering up the latest drivers for all devices

 

[NFS4]

Windows ME works great.....after:

Format C:\

"Press any key to boot from CD..."

"Welcome to Windows XP Setup"

 

[BigSmooth]

I put WinME on my old PC (I built it when it had just come out). Surprisingly, I never had that many problems with it other than some strange power management issues.

 

[moonshinemadness]

Maybe they produced it so it would make the other cr*p they sell look better?!

 

[Muck]

ME is cool with me. It's a great test OS, since 9x natively can span chipsets. And it's the only OS that loads the cabs upon install.

I love it. I never have problems with it. I always keep ME on a drive when I go to a customer's house. But I use XP and 2000 generally on my personal systems.

 

[royaldank]

I ran ME for about 2 years without a problem. I have used it several times to get systems up and running. It has better driver support than 98SE and has helped me out of a jam on a couple of occasion. Mine rarely crashed or gave me any problems.

 

[Staples]

Originally posted by: ELP
Win 2000 SP3 0wns

And what is wrong with SP4?

 

[Lvis]

I liked it better than 98 and 98se. It seemed at first like the m.e. meant moron edition, but it could be tweaked to work just fine. I thought the big improvement in it was it had fewer memory leaks in it than 98. With 98 I would have to reboot a couple times a day, just to speed things up.

 

[weirdichi]

So of all the windows, which is the largest memory hog? Is it:

1. XP
2. 2k
3. ME
4. 98
5. 95
6. 3.1

???

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: weirdichi
So of all the windows, which is the largest memory hog? Is it:

1. XP
2. 2k
3. ME
4. 98
5. 95
6. 3.1

???

I'd say XP, with 2k close behind. But since games and office apps are becoming even bigger hogs, who cares?

 

[dawks]

Since I didnt notice anyone say it, the main goal of WinMe was to migrate more and more users/programmers away from DOS. And prepare them for a Non-Dos world. (All new versions of windows [ie. XP] were to be NT based, meaning no dos at all] WinME did not run on top of DOS the same way 95 and 98 did. Hence why alot of 9x drivers didnt work properly, or at all in WinMe.

WinMe ran fine for me for several months. At least as well as any 9x OS was expected to run. I moved to XP three or four days after it went gold and havent looked back since.

 

[0roo0roo]

yup, it has no reason for existing anymore. i'd rather downgrade to win2k sp4 if you have a copy of that, or just go straight to xp if you have a copy of that.

 

Originally posted by: Staples

Originally posted by: ELP
Win 2000 SP3 0wns

And what is wrong with SP4?

 

[cavemanmoron]

i have had more problems when putting together a new system,with win 98se
than with win ME by Far,
one system i was using some ISA cards,and needed to install Win 98se first,
and Then i was able to upgrade to ME;and have the sound cards,and ethernet,and Video cards all work.

..

I am not happy with the XP pro a friend let me borrow to try,as i can not tell what programs
i can safely turn off,or Must leave on,when trying to figure out for instance;if the system has a program running in the background.

in ME i can hit "ctrl/ALT/DELETE, once,and see that i have for instance,
explorer,systray,and Zone alarm;and "replying to message"

in XP i get like 25 different things. WTF!!!!!!

also in 98se i have to keep the cd handy,or physically in the cd,if i install drivers for my video,sound,ethernet card,etc....

so

 

[sharkeeper]

I guess it depends on how you define stability.

I turn off error reporting service on my machines. Dr Watson is bad enough.

Given that, the stability of XP (NT 5.1) is very good as is 2000. (NT 5.0) There are a few hardware issues that remain. Currently, the most annoying one is 1394 related. MS is aware of the problem and is working on a fix. har-har

Let's face it! Windows is the most universal platform. People expect software written five years to run on XP. Some does, some doesn't. Compatibility emulation does come in handy. Programs still do misbehave. There is no sidestepping this fact. (Adaptec Sleazy CD Destroyer, for example) At least when they do act up, the chances of bringing down the kernel completely are far less with NT than 9x. ME was/is very bad. I've seen some HP Pavilions BSOD right out of the box when trying to set them up! :Q

I'll tell you what I really miss though. The lack of verbose display when something crashes hard. NT 4.0 had very verbose STOP errors. XP doesn't give you near the information. Even 9x could give you a clue as to why you were crashing. ME just says an error has occurred! Really? Is that what you call it? If everyone was using ME, the Internet could become literally advertisement free as merchants would find ad space in BSOD's much more valuable!


-DAK-

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: cavemanmoron
i have had more problems when putting together a new system,with win 98se
than with win ME by Far,
one system i was using some ISA cards,and needed to install Win 98se first,
and Then i was able to upgrade to ME;and have the sound cards,and ethernet,and Video cards all work.

Did you check and see if there were newer 98 drivers available?

..

I am not happy with the XP pro a friend let me borrow to try,as i can not tell what programs
i can safely turn off,

Yes you can. If you try to kill it and it doesn't let you, you can't safely turn it off! "Access denied" means "You can't do that and expect the system to remain stable...that or we want to hog more memory and you can't do jack about it."

or Must leave on,when trying to figure out for instance;if the system has a program running in the background.

in ME i can hit "ctrl/ALT/DELETE, once,and see that i have for instance,
explorer,systray,and Zone alarm;and "replying to message"

Open mouth, insert foot?
You are looking at the wrong tab. Go to Applications, not Processes.

in XP i get like 25 different things. WTF!!!!!!

Processes tab..simple, like NT4:
System Idle Process: system idle
System: Misc. stuff going on that you shouldn't know much about
smss, crss, services, lsass, svchost, winmgmt, svchost, mstask: Stuff you need running for no known reason (That I know or care)
taskmgr: task manager. Yes, you can close it from within itself.
spoolsv: spooler.
...the rest are programs running. With info on CPU usage of each, memory usage (so you can find the POS that has a memory leak), total CPU time if you're bored, change priority, and affinity if you have a dually.

also in 98se i have to keep the cd handy,or physically in the cd,if i install drivers for my video,sound,ethernet card,etc....

No, you just need to copy the Win98 folder to the hard drive. Done. Worked great since Win95 (but the Win95 folder, then). They put this stuff on the HD in Win2k and XP normally (part if why the install is 600+MB usually).

so

...try pushing more buttons and seeing what they do and are trying to do.

 

[udonoogen]

yeah ... so i almost lost my job over this. i was on the phone with microsoft tech support for four hours trying to fix these two computers i broke (check the technical support forum for more details on my situation). windows ME is the suck