Windows ME

[mottlee]

Thoughts on this OS, I might upgrade from 98. A good move??

[geoschmo]

Gawd please don't. Not to ME at least. Skip ME and go to XP, or stick with 98. ME is a serious POS.

[ September 25, 2003, 21:07: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[mottlee]

Thanks, that is what I heard elseware too

[parabolize]

i downgraded to 98 i hated ME so much.

[Loser]

'Round here they stopped selling ME in the stores. You'd find Win2k, XP Pro, XP Home, and 98. No ME. It's bad.

[DavidG]

ME is an unbelievable piece of crap. I was getting 4 or 5 crashes a day when I had this at work. Usually with MS's own software Outlook express. I can't count the hours I wasted before we finally concluded it was ME and not the new computer. I have XP at work now and it works great (although I suspect for my needs 98 would have been a better choice).

I still have ME at home and although it is not as bad as the work incident it does still crash quite often.

A little research on the net told me that ME suffers from major memory leaks resulting in unpredicatable program behavior and crashes

[mottlee]

Thanks all, was a free bee to me BUT i do not need it to be a pain in the butt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

[Andrés]

I'm using winME in my computer and never had any problem. XP is not an option since my outdated computer doesnt meet its hardware requirements.

[Ed Kolis]

You also might want to upgrade to Windows RG (http://www.deanliou.com/WinRG/) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Thermodyne]

ME is just very picky about drivers an apps. But it is a little better at some things than SE. Just be sure that you put the new installer package in.

[SpaceBadger]

Hmm, I have WinMe on two machines, Win98SE on two others. Really the major difference that I notice is that WinMe lets me see thumbnails of graphics in Windows Explorer, saving me from needing to open a graphics app to browse them. OTOH, I rarely use either of the Win98SE machines, so there may be more subtle differences that I am not seeing.

I'm not interested in moving "up" to XP at this time.

Can anyone point to a good comparison of WinMe and Win98SE, as to why 98SE might be better?

SpaceBadger

[Kamog]

I like Windows 98 better than ME or XP.

I'm using Windows XP at work, and so far XP itself has NEVER crashed, even though individual applications might sometimes crash or freeze up. So the operating system is very stable, but I find that some of my old programs either don't work at all under XP or run very slowly.

Windows 98 crashes a lot, but at least all my programs work. Windows ME also crashes a lot, but there's more weird problems than 98.

[Fyron]

I suggest 2000. It is definitely better than 98, and has none of the XP garbage. XP only has a few minor good features over 2000 anyways.

2000 crashes less frequently than XP does for me. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ September 28, 2003, 21:20: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Ruatha]

Win 98 C (aka 2.5) has the most of ME.s features but works better, got it installed on a brand computer and saved the CAB's so I can reinstall it without using the darned recovery discs.

[Roanon]

I was thinking of these MS-let-me-phone-home routines that are plentyful in Win2k but even more (and more difficult to find out where to disable) in WinXP. Will be a too long list to explain here, plus there are a lot of extras suspected but strongly denied by MS that are not documented. In short, if you just setup and don't change anything, you can be pretty sure that after a very short time big brother MS knows your machine and all of the installed programms with all serial numbers, including the processors' serial if you have a Pentium, better than you do.

For complete info and remedy check out www.XP-antispy.org, (http://www.XP-antispy.org,) a german site but the most important things (like the "downlaod" link http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif where an english Version of the program is available) are translated. There is probably a similar english site, but I just don't know any.

[primitive]

Had ME for a couple of years, and never had any problems. Until....

Until the bLasted bLastervirus came out. I know it don't affect ME, but it put me into upgrade mode. Installed the latest patches and Servicepacks and now the system causes me all sorts of griefs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Guess it's time to shop for a new computer again. Yummy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Roanon]

I also strongly recommend Win2k over WinXP on a private computer, i.e. one also used for gaming. Apart from increased spy-crap that is very annoying at least, there are many games that just don't do on XP for unknown reasons. Check also the threads about problems with WinXP and even a simple and non-demanding game like SEIV.

[Thermodyne]

Originally posted by Roanon:
I also strongly recommend Win2k over WinXP on a private computer, i.e. one also used for gaming. Apart from increased spy-crap that is very annoying at least, there are many games that just don't do on XP for unknown reasons. Check also the threads about problems with WinXP and even a simple and non-demanding game like SEIV.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What spycrap are you talking about?

[Loser]

I'm sure he's talking about the pretty, Fischer-Price, injection-molded pLastic, Windows-got-into-Mommy's-makeup, happy-soothing-valium-color, rounded-edges skycrap, which can be disabled.

Personally, disabling that jazz is the first thing I do after loading it up. Although I have recognized that the colors and shapes are, eventually, pleasing to the eyes and gentle on the nerves, I have also found that these features degrade the performance of the machine.

[ September 29, 2003, 12:49: Message edited by: Loser ]