What was the idea behind windows ME?

[minofifa]

I was in class the other day and our prof had powerpoint out but his OS was windows ME. i just reminded me of when i got my first computer and it had windows ME on it. I didn't mind it but i have heard a lot of nasty comments about it. why did microsoft release this millenium edition? was it a step up from win 98 but a step down from win 2000?

 

[drag]

They released it to make money, of course.

It's a Win9x operating system, part of the Win95/Win98/Win98 SE family.

Windows 2000 is a NT operating system like NT 4.0 and Windows XP.

Windows ME was intended as the "home" desktop OS. W2k Pro (there was no W2k home) was intended as a corporate desktop OS.

It was created to make money becuase it's a intern release between Windows 98 SE and Windows XP. (the Win2k "home" edition). It was designed to give people a reason to upgrade... WinXP was designed as the "real" next generation OS. WinME was a sort of half and half.

Or at least that is the impression I get.

What I do know is is that windows ME was one of the worst operating systems ever created. A stiff breeze would crash it.

MS is doing it again with the "Longhorn" OS. Their "next gen" OS is code-named "Blackcomb", longhorn will be the half and half between the NT-based OSes and Blackcomb. I doubt that MS will recreate the ME experience, though.

 

[corkyg]

I used it for a few months in between 98SE and XP. I had no problems with it. It has always been bad mouthed, but it did bring one feature to the party that 98SE did not have - System Restore. That was a plus and it continued in XP. W2K was, and still is a good system for some, but it has always been relatively hardware unfriendly. Basically a cleaned up NT4. I also used it, and it was VERY hardware unfriendly.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: corkyg
I used it for a few months in between 98SE and XP. I had no problems with it. It has always been bad mouthed, but it did bring one feature to the party that 98SE did not have - System Restore. That was a plus and it continued in XP. W2K was, and still is a good system for some, but it has always been relatively hardware unfriendly. Basically a cleaned up NT4. I also used it, and it was VERY hardware unfriendly.

In its infancy, Windows 2000 was hardware unfriendly due to the fact that it was a business-oriented OS and consequently there were few drivers available for it. Since XP's release (which uses the same driver model as 2000), Windows 2000 can support a great deal more hardware.

 

[foxkm]

ME was used to generate revenue off people who were itching to get out of Windows 95/98. OEM it only cost 49.99 and it functionally wasn't any different then 98se except for the System Restore functionality and the hideing of the underlying DOS system.

One of my old roomates has a friend who now works at M$ and has been for a while. I was told that M$ put all the new unexperienced programmers in late 99 to work on a new release of 98 while all the experienced programmers worked on the 2000/XP project. This is probably why Windows ME BLOWS the wind. I have worked at several computer stores and the machines with ME always seemed to have the most problems usually requiring a rename install or a complete wipe and reload.

foxkm

 

[madthumbs]

Win98 was a pita to find drivers for and set up. WinME was extremely easy to set up. Many people had problems with ME, but most do with a new OS, especially the ones insisting on using minimal to near minimal hardware specs. Win2k came out around the same time and was far superior to it, so people naturally jumped on the 2k bandwagon and dissed the ME because "they" couldn't get running stable. For me, it ran stable for weeks on end through some of the most extreme multitasking I've done without needing a reboot. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with choice software, and hardware. It amazes me the garbage people run on their OS's then bitch about the OS.

 

[Jeff7]

Windows Millennium Edition was an excuse to put the word Millennium in front of people's faces, in order to profit off of the next Millennium, even though the new Millennium didn't begin until over a year after Windows Millennium Edition was released.

*Oops, my mistake. It was released about 3 months before the new Millennium began.





















Millennium!!!!!!

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: drag
They released it to make money, of course.

It's a Win9x operating system, part of the Win95/Win98/Win98 SE family.

Windows 2000 is a NT operating system like NT 4.0 and Windows XP.

Windows ME was intended as the "home" desktop OS. W2k Pro (there was no W2k home) was intended as a corporate desktop OS.

It was created to make money becuase it's a intern release between Windows 98 SE and Windows XP. (the Win2k "home" edition). It was designed to give people a reason to upgrade... WinXP was designed as the "real" next generation OS. WinME was a sort of half and half.

Or at least that is the impression I get.

What I do know is is that windows ME was one of the worst operating systems ever created. A stiff breeze would crash it.

MS is doing it again with the "Longhorn" OS. Their "next gen" OS is code-named "Blackcomb", longhorn will be the half and half between the NT-based OSes and Blackcomb. I doubt that MS will recreate the ME experience, though.

Yup...nothing but filler to make a few bucks. IMO it's the worst piece of garbage MS ever released.

 

[jst0ney]

Windows ME was the worst ever!

 

[Dragonbate]

It was actually the first windows not running on top of dos. Unfortunately it worked liked it was a first, ie alpha test machine. It's very buggy and bloated and I often see it touted as "evil" or "work of the devil" in these forums. On machines that support the 9.x line windows 98 se is commonly reguarded as the top of the heap. It had alot of internal upgrades over windows 98 and is generally more stable than ME. Frankly I believe that currently Windows 2000 is the current top of the heap all around but a workstation made from server 2003 looks very interesting. XP home is a watered down xp professional with alot of the useful features removed or disabled. XP professional appears cartoonlike and the activation scheme is unacceptable. Some good information available on this subject Here
-D

 

[foxkm]

Originally posted by: Dragonbate
It was actually the first windows not running on top of dos.

Wrong, ME runs EXACTLY the same over DOS as 95 and 98 does. M$ just tried to hide it, but you can still hack ME to allow you to exit to dos or boot to dos while hitting F8 during boot. I will agree that ME is horribly buggy though...

The first windows not above of DOS was actually Windows NT 3.1 back in 1993.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: foxkm

Originally posted by: Dragonbate
It was actually the first windows not running on top of dos.

Wrong, ME runs EXACTLY the same over DOS as 95 and 98 does. M$ just tried to hide it, but you can still hack ME to allow you to exit to dos or boot to dos while hitting F8 during boot. I will agree that ME is horribly buggy though...

The first windows not above of DOS was actually Windows NT 3.1 back in 1993.

Mhahahah.

Yep. It used "dos" in the same way that all the other Win9x OSes did. Microsoft marketing tried to make it sound like it didn't, but like most things MS marketting (and most other corporations) distrorts everything.

The NT OS was something completely different. When they took NT and added the Win32 API that made Windows 2000, and it was a short skip, jump, and a hop to WinXP.

Two major lines of PC OSes .
Windows 95 ---> Windows 98 ---> Windows 98 SE ---> Windows ME ---> dead.
NT 3.x ---> NT 4.0 ---> NT 5 (Windows 2000) ---> NT 5.1 (Windows XP) ---> NT 5.2 (Windows 2003) ---> NT 5.x (Longhorn) ---> dead(?).
(?) ---> (?) (Blackcomb).

Microsoft also has a couple lines of embedded operating systems. Windows XP embedded, Windows CE, Windows CE for smartphones, Windows Mobile, Windows Tablet, etc etc.

 

[thegorx]

the major advantage that I can think of that ME has over 98
is the three registry files apposed to 2 in windows 98
these days with bulky software
the windows 98 registry gets too full and scanreg has problems
with the system.dat if it's too large.

the major pain are many
the way it handles drivers is a pain
and the fact that you have to use a boot disk to get to DOS is a major pain

there are many more but I can't think of them right now

 

[minofifa]

wow that's pretty neat.... i didn't know it was like that.

so longhorn is to XP as ME is to "98SE"? well i doubt i would upgrade then if not much is going to change, i like XP right now, it works well for me. I thought there was a lot of anticipation and excitement about longhorn but from what you guys are saying, it's just to tide us over until the new OS comes out. What's going to be so special about the new OS plannned (blackcomb)? how is it so different than the NT lineage of OS's?

 

[Unforgiven]

i remember when windows me came out that one of the major selling points was that it booted faster than windows 98. little did they tell you that you would have to reboot every couple of hours due to massive memory leaks, dr. watson errors and blue screens. the most uptime i ever had with windows me was 2 days and at that point my system resources were down to 16% before it blue screened the only thing really appealing about windows me was that it was the first of the new line of microsoft icons and introduced the blue desktop by default as opposed to the green of windows 95 and 98 RIP and good riddance!

 

[djdrastic]

My God this was truly the mos horrible crap that has ever been thrown on our poor computer screens

Beating the likes of Microsoft BOB , is quite an achievement

 

[biostud]

It's really amazing how quickly you forget about the need of re-installing after changing to XP. Sometimes you need to re-install drivers, but the core just keep working unless you really try to fumble/tweak around.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: minofifa
wow that's pretty neat.... i didn't know it was like that.

so longhorn is to XP as ME is to "98SE"? well i doubt i would upgrade then if not much is going to change, i like XP right now, it works well for me. I thought there was a lot of anticipation and excitement about longhorn but from what you guys are saying, it's just to tide us over until the new OS comes out. What's going to be so special about the new OS plannned (blackcomb)? how is it so different than the NT lineage of OS's?

I have no clue. And don't be to down on Longhorn. It's going to be bigger difference between XP then W2k to XP. So if you see a big difference between the 2 OSes then it may be good for you to upgrade. To me w2k and XP are pretty much the same, so keep that in mind when you read what I say. Plus I am no expert or anything, this is just my personal understanding.

That being said.... Longhorn probably isn't going to be a big deal... For a while it seemed like it was a going to be the "next gen" but after MS dropped most of it's realy out-there features such as WinFS and changed Avalon from being a next GUI to a add-on to WinXP and Longhorn it's not so impressive of a change.

It should have better security then WinXP though, and that alone would make it worth to upgrade.

As for blackcomb? I don't know. That's just pretty much what MS has been saying. They probably have very little of it done.

This is how they supposadly got the naming.

There is a ski resort or something. There are 2 mountains. They are named Whistler and Blackcomb.
Whistler was codename for Windows 2003, or the .NET server or framework, or whatever the hell .NET was originally suppose to be.

Blackcomb is the next mountain that MS must climb.

In between the two mountains is a lodge named Longhorn, so that Longhorn is a bit of a pit-stop between the two.

resort stuff (do a page search for longhorn)

 

[rmrf]

This is a pretty interesting read, longhorn info & faq

Palladium controls information after it's sent from your PC.
Using Digital Rights Management (DRM)
technology, Palladium can be used to securely distribute music, movies, and other intellectual property securely over the Internet. Movie studios and the recording industry could use this technology to let their customers exercise their fair use rights to copy audio CDs and movies, for example. "It's a funny thing," says Bill Gates. "We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains." Gates says that Palladium could ensure that email designated as private could not be forwarded or copied to other people, for example. Or, the Newsweek reports reads, "you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week. In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these policies."

I think I'll stick to linux.

EDIT: Oh, and ME is from the devil. All of the machines that I know of that have ME on them run like crap, I would install 98 any day of the week if those were the only two choices.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: rmrf
This is a pretty interesting read, longhorn info & faq

Palladium controls information after it's sent from your PC.
Using Digital Rights Management (DRM)
technology, Palladium can be used to securely distribute music, movies, and other intellectual property securely over the Internet. Movie studios and the recording industry could use this technology to let their customers exercise their fair use rights to copy audio CDs and movies, for example. "It's a funny thing," says Bill Gates. "We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains." Gates says that Palladium could ensure that email designated as private could not be forwarded or copied to other people, for example. Or, the Newsweek reports reads, "you could create Word documents that could be read only in the next week. In all cases, it would be the user, not Microsoft, who sets these policies."

I think I'll stick to linux.

EDIT: Oh, and ME is from the devil. All of the machines that I know of that have ME on them run like crap, I would install 98 any day of the week if those were the only two choices.

Oh, you don't have to worry about Palladium. MS changed it's name to Trusted Computing, so it's safe to use now, because it's trusted!

 

[rmrf]

^ HA!

 

[daveshel]

Really, M$ never planned ME. Win98 SE was supposed to be the end of the line. When Windows 2000 came out, its initial sales was disappointing. M$ freaked out and rushed ME to market to be able to offer something 'year 2000 compliant' and boost sagging sales. They took some of the look and feel of Win2k and reverse engineered it into the 9x kernel, made a few tweaks and rushed it to market. The real problem was that ISVs, who had just had to write drivers for Win2k, balked at the proposition of having to come up with another set for ME, and the result was poor driver support.

 

[madthumbs]

Originally posted by: Unforgiven
i remember when windows me came out that one of the major selling points was that it booted faster than windows 98. little did they tell you that you would have to reboot every couple of hours due to massive memory leaks, dr. watson errors and blue screens. the most uptime i ever had with windows me was 2 days and at that point my system resources were down to 16% before it blue screened the only thing really appealing about windows me was that it was the first of the new line of microsoft icons and introduced the blue desktop by default as opposed to the green of windows 95 and 98 RIP and good riddance!

-I only had to reboot when installing or updating something.
-Never seen a Dr Watson error on ME, and blue screened only from hardware fault
-Uptime for me was 3 weeks and then only because of accidental reboot. Back then, it was rare for me not to need a reboot for software installs.

I had many more problems with XP in the beginning than ME. I won't call XP crap because of it though.

 

[drag]

I worked at a help desk for a major ISP for a few months and beleive me that although it's possible to have a WinME install that works out ok, that's definately the exception to the rule.

WinME was defineately the OS to Phear when you have 10 minutes to fix a person's failed dial-up access.
(ps. ME was realy a bad OS. Worst one that I've seen so far.)

 

[minofifa]

i live pretty close to blackcomb.... that is kind of neat.

As far as that palladium goes, i don't like the sound of it one ibt. not that i have massive amounts of illegal material on my computer (which i really don't) but i think other people will have too much control over what we use our computers for. Maybe in some situations it would be a good idea but i hope we have a choice.