Why ME??

[X14]

I'm still debating if I should go out and buy WinME today.

The biggest influence on my decision is stability. If WinME is more stable than Win98SE, I'll will probably get it.

My biggest complaint about Win98SE is that it poorly manages System Resources. When I boot, I start w/ 96% of my System Resources. After running some apps for awhile then shutting them all down, System Resources drops to the low 80%.

Why can't Win98 reclaim all of the resources it started with? If I turn off all of the system recovery features of WinME will I still start w/ 96% of the System Resources like I do in Win98? And secondly, does WinME recover these resources better when you shut down apps?

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Win 98 actually is pretty good at haddling resources. Just because the resorce meter dosen't go all the way back doesn't mean it isn't recoverable,

Once those mb of ram are needed, they are instantly cleared to make room. It's just that Win98 dosen't bother to waste cpu clock cycles to restore the ram back to when you didn't load programs.

 

[RayEarth]

don't buy it if you have the retail version of win98se, i have both the full version of win98se & winme, i did both a clean installation & a upgrade & on certain videocards it will lockup if you're not using the latest drivers, but then you say why not just update to the latest drivers? because nvidia's newest drivers cause more problems & degrades certain games performance, & winme won't let you install older drivers, when i did a clean install, it detected my tnt2 ultra & used the nvidia reference driver & when i tried to install the creativelabs driver 3.68 it gave me a fatal error & every game i installed even after going back to the reference driver gave me fatal errors.

 

[Bad Dude]

I have no problems here installing my CL DDR Anihilator PRO. Everything seems fine here. I got the full retail version.

 

[Henry Kuo]

i was using win98se for the past yr (or more), usually reboot at least once every two days. crash at least 2 times a week (on avg)

i have been using winme for the past 2 months. no crash and no need to reboot at all....

that's my experience.

 

[LXi]

You will be disappointed if you're looking to gain performan and stability. WinME is nothing but a 98SE with fancy looks in disguise. Not worth the hard earned money.

 

[Wingznut]

I think WinME is a worthy upgrade. No complaints here.

 

[bluezebra1098]

Amen to that.
Once you get by some screwy drivers for the video card (which by the way, I was able to install older drivers for my video card that work in place of the reference drivers) and do a little tweaking everything is very stable right now. I had IE 5.5 with Win 98SE and it was fast but with ME everything is very fast.
ME recognized ALL of my hardware except for the sound card. Try that with WIN 2K!

 

[Warrenton]

I agree, WinMe is worthy of my system.

 

[Soccerman]

"The biggest influence on my decision is stability. If WinME is more stable than Win98SE, I'll will probably get it."

well you can't base anything you read on these forums, because as I said in one of RSI's threads, it all depends on the user's ability to find problems and fix them, and NOT install crap software (ie shareware).

MANY people on this forum have had problems with ME, becuase of drivers, and other reasons. I personally feel that ME just has to get the drivers all fixed for it, and then it will be fine (same as Windows 98, where in order to keep it stable, you can't just treat it like trash).

here I'll go look for that message I posted in RSI's thread a while back.. it was a great post.

 

[Noriaki]

The transition from Win95 to Win98 actually had some changes. Not many that you could see but deep inside there were some upgrades to memory management code, and there is better support for USB and AGP..and a few other things. Nothing major, but a few code changes.

Windows ME is very much a cosmetic makeover of Win98SE, it should by rights be called Windows 98 3rd Ed. I've been running this system on Win98SE since january and I've had 2 or 3 crashes. I went back to Win95OSR2.1 for a while, and my system had many crashes and lock ups, so I'm back to 98SE. I don't have any trouble with stability in 98SE. But I'm very meticulous about what I install and what I don't. I have every confidence that were I to upgrade to Win ME it would run just as well. (Win95 had one to many patches for almost everything, Win98SE nor WinME would need these, so while Win95 is less stable than Win98, I don't see why WinME would be)

If you have a full retail version of Win98SE, I don't see a whole lot of point in upgrading to WinME, but it certainly won't hurt anything. I don't like the system file protection and lack of native DOS mode that WinME has, but that won't affect most people. If you have Win95, I'd probably grab Win ME, but probably won't from Win 98SE. Win ME looks a little cuter than Win98, but it's really just Win98SE + Upgrades/Updates/Patches, with a bigger driver base and no DOS mode. Really not a whole lot of difference.

 

[Soccerman]

dah I can't find it.. they must have deleted his thread (it was pretty much made for flaming GM)..

 

[Super6]

Less is more....98Lite.

Super6

 

[extra]

DON'T BUY IT, PIR8!!
okay, okay, so i'm just kiddin
but win2k better, imho

 

[Erasmus-X]

<< ME recognized ALL of my hardware except for the sound card. Try that with WIN 2K! >>



Heh....well, Win2k actually detected ALL of my hardware except for my Tekram DC315U SCSI card. I've installed WinMe on three different machines so far and all of them had a few issues with drivers and hardware detection. One of the systems had a really old ATI Rage (Mach64 chipset) PCI card that Me refused to detect properly. I had to force-feed it Mach64 drivers.

But this isn't to say that we can't install our hardware like men (you know, the way you had to do it in the DOS/Win3x days). I really miss those days...

 

[Henry Kuo]

well, I will just tell you my experience.

when i was using win98se, i have to reboot the system at least once a day or two. otherwise the memory leak is terrible. also, with normal use there will be a crash or two every week.

i have been using winme for 2 months, and i haven't reboot it once, and it hasn't crashed once on me neither. i think it is quite stable, though it is no match with win2k.

speedwise, it is the same for me. i don't see anything run faster or slower.

 

[blade47]

I've got win98 not SE. Would it be worth it to upgrade to ME?

 

[AMB]

I like it, I have only had two crahsed in two monts, that was in FSIM 2000 and WMP7, I think that it is very stable and just as fast, also, i like the interface, no complaints really,

 

[Tubby]

Yeah i agree i use 'me' and its only crashed on me once i have had it for a while now.

 

[dawks]

Win 98 actually is pretty good at haddling resources
heh, try telling that to 3D Studio MAX, or Softimage.. or photoshop even.

 

[Ferocious]

I think I'd sell my computer before I paid for any software made by Microshaft.

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;But this isn't to say that we can't install our hardware like men (you know, the way you had to do it in the DOS/Win3x days). I really miss those days...&quot;

heh I wish I learned how.. I only BEGAN with computers when I was in grade 7. I got my first learner, an 8086, I think in Grade 8, and had that till I got a 486 which we had windows 3.1 running on, but I didn't know much about installing hardware etc back then, so we had to send it in to get stuff installed. when we got our Pentium 133, we had windows 95 put on it. that was the first time I ever really learned about hardware.

I had started reading Anandtech when I had the 486, but that just allowed me to get the basics. when I started with the Pentium, I began to learn ALOT about computers, but now that I look back, I needed the background information first, before I could get into this. even though I didn't install anything in 3.1, I learned alot from it!

now with my K6-2 400, and numerous other upgrades, I'm in grade 12, and I've BARELY scratched the surface!

all I can say to you guys who are wondering about if ME is better then 98, is this: YOU have to make your OWN decision. YOU cannot allow yourself to be influenced by someone elses experience, because THEY aren't you.

they handle the computer differently. everyone does. the way they handle it (by Handle it, I mean, how well they treat it, in terms of software they install, viruses, the type of person they are gets reflected in how often they have to reformat!) is as different with everyone as your fingerprint.