I agree that having no native DOS mode is a pain, but a handy Win95 or Win98 boot disk easily resolves that problem.
The ONLY problem I have ever had with WinME is when one of my systems got a virus, and the virus somehow got copied into the _RESTORE directory, at which point I had to wipe the entire directory to get rid of the virus.
Other than that, ME is perfectly stable with everything I have tried, including many different games, business apps, entertainment (DVD and MPEG) programs, etc.
After a clean installation of the OS on a freshly formatted hard drive, I've been running happily under ME for quite some time, and the only time it has ever crashed was when I accidentally kicked my case over and knocked the IDE cable out of the socket...
There are obviously problems if so many people have complaints, but I find it funny that everyone who encounters ONE problem automatically declare that ME is crap and completely worthless! (Especially since I've never had a problem with it on any of my personal computers, or on any of the 100+ computers I maintain.)