Why exactly is 98SE better than ME?

[aj3001]

a lot of ppl on these forums says ME is crap (compared to 98SE)...why exactly? dont take upgrade costs into account.

 

[ProviaFan]

First, it has lots of useless features (system restore, which most power users will have to go to the trouble of disabling). And they now have integrated some movie maker crap into the OS, so it's more bloated than ever. Besides that, it seems to crash a good deal. Even on an HP system, which has ME preinstalled, it seems to crash more in the 2 hours each week that I have to use it, than my box, when it used to have Windows 98 installed, would crash in a month. So that's why I don't like it; the only good I can say about it is that it boots quite fast.

 

[Zach]

WinMe is fatter, made for dumber people...

 

[Zach]

And it has a very stupid name.

 

[lucidguy]

It looks like the sort of OS that an Ecstasy-popping Teletubby would make out of Legos. While sitting in a translucent, inflatable chair. And eating gummy bears to cure his munchies.

 

[aj3001]

that was informative...thanks

 

[DieselMan]

Yeah, win98se is just generally more stable, smaller, and faster.

But I want to emphasize that it DOES DEPEND on the system your run the OS on. I built a system for my girlfriend using a Tyan Trinity 400 and 256MB of RAM (and a P3 700@933), and I installed WinME on it, and for some reason, it RUNS GREAT, SMOOTH, and STABLE! It was another story at work when I tested winME on a Dell! Pure crap on that system!

 

[dcdomain]

I beg to differ about the system restore feature. I installed WinMe on my little bro's computer and also my lil' sister's computer. Thank god for system restore. It saved their ass so many times. When I'm gone for school there's no one there to fix the comp if something messes up. WinME has worked perfectly for them too since I installed them. If you are a power user, you shouldn't even consider the 9x line. Just go straight to Win2K. Sure it's more of a problem to set up in the beginning but you'll never go back. I went through almost a month of headaches and almost went back to 9x multiple times. Thankfully I didn't... still with Win2K today. Even on my little laptop (300mhz, 96mb ram!)

 

[johnlog]

Well, I see a bunch of dumb and wrong replies about the stabiliity of Win ME. ME works great on my computers. It is more stable than Win98 SE was on the same computers.

With the price of 30 to 40 gig hard drives so low now it is moot that Windows ME uses up more hard drive space. I still have more than 15 gigs free on a 20 gig hard drive and I have both Word 2K Suite and WordPerfect 2000 suite installed. Plus a bunch of other programs I use.

If some of you really are the geek users you claim to be WinME has to be a no brainer to keep it healthy. What I think is some on this forum who brag about bieng a computer geek are really beginners and amatuers if they cannot figure out how to fix really simple problems that may come up with Win95 to WinME.

Look at all the problems Win2K users are having and yet they continue to harp how great it is when they are constantly having problems with it. Seems to me that about 95% of the complaint notes and notes asking for help on Anandtech are from Linux and WinNT/2K users. ;

JL

 

[OggyDoggy]

Easy john...

Most of the computer "geeks" I know, do not like ME for various reasons. I don't like it because tweaking 98 and in 2000 is way easier. For one, if you disable the Restore feature, the OS will still make attempts to back the hard drive. Also, the Restore places a restore folder on all hard drives whether you want it to or not. Most advance users will never use the Restore feature. And... THEY took away the command prompt. Well, it's still there, just takes a little work to uncover. WOW!! I still like using a command prompt.. Most "advanced" users do.

I have to say that ME is somewhat more stable than 98. But not enough for me, taking in consideration the tweaking ability in 98 and 2000.

 

[frover2000]

Personally i like WinME alot, it runs stable as hell, boots quick and plays ALL my games..unlike win2k.
Also my radeon runs considerably better and it doesn't have that annoying refresh rate bug, so it really depends on the system and user as to whether or not winme is suitable.

 

[Blayze]

I personally like ME better than 98.
I have had less problems with ME, although I agree that the system restore is useless junk.

Windows 2000 is still a better everyday OS, but if your into gaming, etc... then Windows ME is a excellent choice in my opinion.

 

[MTDEW]

Ive had alot less problems with ME over 98Se also.

Of course I DO have sytem restore disabled.(i use Ghost)(98% resources free)

I did a clean install on my pc, runs flawless & crash free & all my benchmarks are right on with my 98SE benchmarks.

Out of curiosity I just did the upgrade to my wifes pc, (upgraded over 98SE w/ ME) & it was unstable as heck!

So I ended up doing a clean install on hers too.
Now no problems.

I honestly feel if you try ME with a clean install, you wont encounter any problems.
I'm happy with it.

I dual boot ME & 2000 & to be honest, I use ME more often.
Mostly because my games play better on ME.

 

[Dazmite]

I have ME on 2 PCs and 98 and 98SE on the others. ME works just fine here, only thing I don't like is its use of memory, ME will take your memory down to almost nothing, I installed ram booster that automatically frees ram back up, but it still bothers me I actually didn't even notice it until I read a post here about it.
I am think most tweaks for 98 will work on ME, I did also disable the restore feature.
Daz

 

[cirrus1]

IMO Win98 SE is lean & mean compared to Win ME. The extra "features" in ME is nothing I'm appreciating and I feel it is too bloated.

As many others I'm doing the NT/Linux line

 

[ShawnReeves]

I Run WinME on both my machines at home.
Am I the Only one that Noticed a huge increase on the internet vs Win2k????
Using www.2wires.com Bandwidth Test Win2k on average serves up 350k - 500k sec.
WinME on the other hand serves up 500k - 1.2mb a sec.
Not sure if winME runs any faster for Dialup...but I wouldn't see why not??

I used to Dual Boot to Win2k.....I formatted it for now because I really have no use for it at the moment. WinME is Fast, Stable and all around Kool

Just my .02

Shawn

 

[IBuyUFO]

I used to run win ME before switching to windows 2000. Things I've noticed between win 98se and ME was that ME was faster in loading. It was much more stable than 98se. Most or all the programs designed for 98 worked on ME. Most of the time people who complain about stability problems have some kind of hardware or driver conflicts in their systems and think it's an issue with the OS.
I've never had a problem with any of my systems. They've all worked from windows 98, 98se, Me, windows 2000, windows xp, and linux.