Windows Millenium

[ReddDogg]

Don't see Winders Me on the forum at all, so I thought I would bring it up. I know it isn't retailing yet, but I have a copy of it from work, and have been running it for awhile, and from what I can see, it is a good upgrade from windows 98. It doesn't crash as much, and it has a wonderful feature when searching for drivers, instead of just looking in a folder you tell it too, it looks through entire cd folder by folder. Other added benifits are expanded hardware support, and faster boot up time. However, it does run a tad slower by itself, but it seems to handle multitasking better. I am gonna install Winders Me on all computers I build after it's release date, and if you have at least 64 megs of ram, and at least a 300 PII equivlant processor, i know it will work good. That is the slowest computer I tested it on (my laptop, my baby). It also ran good on a celeron 366, 433, and Athlon 500 system I own. Only Sony Hotburn did not work with it and froze it, but Hot Burn froze 98 and 95, so that doesn't alarm me at all. One more added feature, once you install winders Me, it doesn't ask for the disk again, so while it does take up 500+ megs of hard drive, it automatically puts the cab files on the hard drive, which windows 98 with cab files on hard drive (files that are used on cd when installing things) actaully takes up a bit more space on drive. Is in my opinion a sound improvement from 98.

------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,

a couple thoughts on Winders Me. If I was purchasing a new home PC I would no doubt have it pre-installed as my OS of choice. However for those of us who still hold tenaciously to our early model PCs ie. the later 486s & early Pentiums it is not an upgrade option as the minimum system requirements are a Pentium I 166MHz (?) or thereabouts. And ofcourse the quoted minimums are rarely enough to run it comfortably. You usually need an extra 100MHz & an extra 32MB RAM over what they state to multitask etc with relative ease.

Windows 98 Second Edition is as far as I can go with my current system, & that is fine with me. I consider Window Me as Windows 98 Third Edition. Which I don’t have a problem with, but I couldn't justify the cost of an upgrade on it, but would have it bundled with a new PC purchase.

My other concern is that it seems to have been rushed to market to meet the US “back to school” sales season. Although I don't blame MS for that entirely, evidently their was a lot of pressure from OEMs to have a Windows OS with a current year date, rather than 98 SE, which I admit does sound rather dated considering we are now in September 2000.

I am wondering if the fact that there are already security patches downloadable from the MS site for IE 5.5 (which I run myself, originally in it's Beta version, & now in the fully fledged form) is evidence that it was released in a hurry?

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[ixl]

I must confess that I haven't looked into it in detail yet, but on the surface it looks like yet another in a long line of virtually pointless "upgrade options" from Microsoft. After 2 years I finally installed Windows 98 when I created a new desktop PC; sure, it's slightly better than Win 95 in some ways, but mostly it's an overpriced collection of UI tweaks, bug fixes and driver updates.

I am still running Windows 95 on my main machine, my notebook. I have not and do not see any reason to go through the hassle and risk of an OS upgrade for virtually no upside. I'll take a look at Windows ME as well, but I'll be surprised if it isn't just the same: more bloat and tweaks for $100. I can use the money elsewhere.

------------------
Charles M. Kozierok ( ixlubb@PCGuide.com )
Webslave, The PC Guide (http://www.PCGuide.com)
Comprehensive PC Reference, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Buyer's Guides...

[der King Mongo]

The only use I found for win98 as opposed to win95 was the more functional task bar, but that came free along with that Active Desktop crap with the IE 4.0 upgrade. Incidentally, the link to download the Active Desktop (and the enhanced 95 task bar) still works, if anyone ever needs it.

And yes, I don't see ME being worth the effort. I trust W95 as a home OS waaaay more than I trust 98, and winME is bound to need at least 1-2 years before it's been patched sufficiently to be trustworthy.

------------------
***He who eats when he is full, digs his grave with his teeth***

[StellarGnome]

Windows ME is MS evolution in the combining of their NT and Win 9x platform. This upgrade does have some useful features in that it is a more stable environment and that it has inherent Win 2000 properties. I look forward to the next major upgrade to see if MS will have a OS that is as stable as UNIX and more intelligent repair features.

[ReddDogg]

I don't see Millenium as being rushed to the market for back to school... it has been much more thouroughly tested than say windows 2000, I had a beta version of it back in January, and it was in it's second beta version then. How meticulous do you want them to be when making it? Unlike unix

ME is not an upgrade to windows 2000, the only thing it has in common with 2000 is it is microsoft made, and it hardly crashes or needs reboot. It basically needs 64 megs of ram and around a 300 processor to run effeciently, though it will run on slower computer.

I was wondering if anyone here has been running the new os and has had any problems with it, what impressions it has given to those who have used it. Obviously Microsoft has had a large number of deficiencies, their biggest problem always has been that they don't listen enough to their beta testers, and they keep their beta testing so limited. Linux has grown so rapidly because everyone who can make and improvment gets the chance.

Anyway, I have Red Hat 6.1 at home, and Mandrake 4.5 to play with, I am sure from what I have heard that once i get used to them, I will think poorly of ms products. Anyway, if anyone is currently using Me or has tried it out, let me know what you think, what you like and don't like. I know I didn't like Windows Media Player 7, but I am used to it now.


------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[Samantha]

I haven't tried WinME, but I've read the reviews in what a friend always refers to as the "MS lapdog" media. PC Magazine, for example, seemed to be bending over backward to find nice things to say about it. Most of the "improvements" seem to be in the "integrated" multimedia components, which is just more of MS trying to tie independent components to the Windows, complete with their favorite tricks, such as not supporting Real Player formats. There's also the "new" system monitoring and restore utilities that don't do anything that specialized programs have been doing for years. With an upgrade, PC Magazine found WinME to have configuration and stability problems. They also found the WinME is slower than Win98SE and that any performance boost was coming from improvements in IE5.5. WIN98SE with IE5.5 is faster than WinME. In the end, they recommended it only if you're buying a new PC.

WinME, IMO, is nothing more than MS trying to wring out every last dollar it can from the Win9x platform. A full-priced, minor upgrade to Win98, which was the same for Win95.


------------------
S~~

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,
This one is for u. Hope that u enjoy it. Let me know if their are any for Win98SE. :-)

"Totalidea TweakME Review 9/22/00 1:07:06 AM
You’ve got the software giant’s brand new OS and you're happy...feeling good about the upgrade, but there’s still something missing. Some people cannot be satisfied until they break something - so why not tweak it. Windows Me has been released and Totalidea Software has the first tweaking utility that enables you to get those custom results you want. It’s called Tweak-Me. Interested in seeing if Tweak ME can pump up your Windows ME experience? Check out the full review right here."

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,
seems the link didn't copy into my last posting so try the URL: http://www.techextreme.com/display.asp?ID=218&Page=1

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[ReddDogg]

The product looks great, but now I gotta figure out where to get this product... I wanna download it and play.

I finally figured out why WindowsME elimated the Windows Explorer icon to click on... that utility runs slow and freezes constantly. I finally upgraded on my main box, my Athlon600, and installed windoze 2000 and windozeME on dual boot, with each having own 1 gig partition and then remaining 18 gigs formated fat32 so both recognize. Is sweet, except I can't get my 2000 os to logon to the NT 4.0 machine, and it doesn't see any computers on the network... but I will figure it out.

------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[Paleo Pete]

Don't know much about ME, and haven't run it, don't have the $100 anyway, but from what I've seen in other forums it seems to have plenty bugs still. Some folks seem to like it quite well, others seem to wish they'd stayed with 98.

As for the comments made about 98 above, I've been using it since shortly after SE came out, and have had very little trouble with it, most of it resulting form third party software I installed. By the way, I tried Panda Antivirus after it was highly recommended by someone else, and it crashed my machine big time, and my neice's machine when I installed it to check and see if it had something McAffee and Norton had both missed. Took me 2 days to get my machine fixed, but was about to format the neice's machine anyway, so I fdisked and carried on...On mine I had to replace the registry, uninstall Panda in Safe Mode, run Tweak and repair system files, fdisk /mbr...

But with 98 itself, I've installed it on about 30 machines, and only one had trouble, and that was due to a bad motherboard.

------------------
If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,

more on your beloved WinMe:

WINDOWS ME DEMANDS APP UPGRADES Antivirus and security software may need an update to run on Windows Millennium Edition. http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,18556,00.html

DATA LOSS THREATENS FAST WINDOWS SYSTEMS Systems running at 933 MHz and faster with Windows 98 or Me risk data loss at shutdown. http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,18578,00.html

Gotta Go Bronco.......Son of Zeus.

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg,

your loved one, WinMe, seems to generating lots of controversy.

For more read The Register here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13535.html

Cheers.......Son of Zeus.

[ReddDogg]

Oh, I know Me is not the end all fix to the windows dilema. I am trying like all get out to get linux installed on this celeron 433 machine I own. If I get it running properly and learn linux, I might just find or figure out how to write the drivers to make my **** run, and just elimate microsoft from my house all together.

My laptop runs great on windows Me, but I have run into some problems on my main Athlon 600 machine, with some driver issues, and installing this new tv tuner card I bought, but I resolved all that. I will admit though, with the system restore, it does save alot of hassles if you want to play... I like that system restore.


------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[tallyman]

Just to add my bit, Win ME does appear to be a more practical improvement on 98 than 98 was on 95 (does that make sense?). I will probably get around to installing it, if only for the ease of loading new drivers! However looking over the number of updates and fixes that came on line after Win 98 1st came out, it appears sheer folly not to wait for the (inevitable) 2nd release ME before taking the plunge.

John R.

[Lynnguist]

I installed ME on my hubby's computer and mine. His computer was having intermittant problems with 98, ME took care of the hangs-ups etc. I had no problems with 98 on my 'puter but now, with ME, the errors, hang-ups, etc. are rampant! Whatd'yaknow! Well I like to lay-out of ME. I really like the thumbnail view in folders. I just gotta figure out all the Fatal Exceptions!!
Computers, if I didn't like em so much, I'd hate em!

------------------
Lynn

[Son of Zeus]

ReddDogg, tallyman & Lynnguist,

just wanted to let u all know that I have posted under "Help me spend $$$ on new PC!!!" the specs for my planned system which includes an AMD Duron 700MHz processor. I am looking for some feedback.

U guys (& lady) sound as if u have had PCs a lot longer than me. I have had my one & only machine since January 4th 2000 ie. nearly 9 months. Eek that long ah. So as I am probably still classified as a newbie I could use some advice.

Hope to hear from u soon.

Catch u Later.......Son of Zeus.

[bassvax]

Joe ReddDogg check out www.techtv.com (http://www.techtv.com) and go to The Screensavers web site (the url for the screensavers doesnt seem to be working right now that is why you have to go the round-a-bout way to get there) they have a pretty good info base on Linux in the Superguide. Our computer engineer has hinted at learning Linux to run as an e-mail server for our company. I volunteered to learn it if they let me take home an computer to work with...so far no word. Hope there is some help there for you-Jerry

[zogg]

Win Me...... what a joke.......I had for 2 months an oem edition. Its win98 with lots of pointless wizards and windows 2000 icons. There are few good features like the added tabs in msconfig. But overall its win98 with a system recovery utility that runs all the time eating precious resources. All that is is a fancy version of scanreg. The worst part of it is that they did away with dos. How can anyone live without dos. What if youhave to run an emergency utility for some purpose, you cant. No dos support. Oh they do tuck away a prompt in the accessories folder. But if you want to sys a floppy you cant. You would have to make a sdtandard boot disk in add/remove programs and then delete all the other junk until you are left with command.com,io.sys and msdos.sys.... The networking is peer to peer only......no client /server type networking with me. also there is no significanrt improvement in any benchmarks so why spend extras money for this pointless upgrade which is in a way a downgrade for 98.So I give it a big thumbs down>

------------------
Find Lost Money That is Owed to you! (http://iamradical.homestead.com/files/lost_moola.htm)

[This message has been edited by zogg (edited 10-01-2000).]

[This message has been edited by zogg (edited 10-01-2000).]

[Bigkid]

I installed WindersMe just after after it was released. At first I thought it was great, fixed some problems that I was having with a few programs. I have Norton utilities installed and when I ran Norton speed disk and rebooted, it wouldn't boot up. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif I thought it was a fluke, I had to start up from the start up disk and reinstall Me. After reinstalling I waited for a week or so to see if any more problems would show up and none did, so I tried to run Norton speed disk again. Again it wouldn't reboot. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/mad.gif Needless to say I have now uninstalled WindersMe and went back to Win98.

[Bryan]

der King Mongo, Could I get that link for the Win95 Task Bar upgrade from ya? Thanks

[sea69]

Just recently I was refered by a friend to help "break in" a new pc. It was a Gateway, celeron- 6xxmhz's; anyway the point is it was an ME os.
At 1st I hadnt payed much attention to that fact . Then upon opening and closing sevreal applications that I use Frequently(daily) I was APPALED @ the slowness of this machine. Mine is only about 150 mhz's faster and I have Win 98se, but my pc is MUCH MUCH MUCH noticiably Faster.. I can mostly assume that is the diff between the 2 os's.......

------------------
lol...so I cant spell...

[ReddDogg]

Well, quite frankly, you can't say that just because your computer is 150 mhz slower yet your computer is faster that the os must be what is slowing it down. There are a crapload of variables that control how fast your computer is. Most important, don't use an oem version of Me. Second, what all is running in the system tray. I have Me running on a PII 300 laptop w/ 128 megs of brand name ram, with a lucent winmodem, 6 gig hard drive, xircom 10/100 nic, and a 24x cd rom drive, and it runs snappy enough for me. ME made it boot up faster, and it transfer's files across my network faster, because with 98se, it would only run 100 on the network about half of the time. Me is better for running games for some odd reason, and I love the easy to use system restore feature. Removing IE from teh system really speeded it up too, and i run strikly Opera 5.0 on it now.

Only downfall I have had with ME on this machine, is that I get disconnected more with my lt winmodem on low quality phone lines, were in 98se I stayed on all the time. However, I have found some modem extra settings to take care of that.

Quite frankly, I am glad ME is available, cause it is alot harder to screw up for dum dum users, and it runs nice when you tweak it for advanced users. ONly people whom it is not meant for is people who know enough not to screw up windows 98se, but aren't smart enough to tweak ME to run right. That is my opinion. You of course are entitled to your own.

------------------
Joe Redd
MCP

[sea69]

a step by step response: ok.. my comment was regarding my experience with ME on only one system, and it was a brand new Gateway right out of the box. Certainly it will be better once 'tweaked' !!(@ least one would hope)

It is whatever was loaded from the factory (version)
I have seen many posts On This Site, reflecting ME's problems with 'games', and also the inability to even play some games on that OS at all.

Possibly it(ME) is better on networked pc's, Im not sure about THAT either. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
{{system restore is easily downloadable and come w/ Compaq pc's from the jump}}>> IE-5.5 is still a problem for many people and I personally refuse to install it.

WinModem's Bite http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

While ME (may) be easier for "dum dum" users........ it's lack of an actuall DOS makes it MUCH more difficult to straighten out should it get messed up.

Opinion: me thinks that ME was an answer to all those that simply MUST have an "up to date" OS (ie- with the current year in the name of the title) ....lol also it was marketing.. pure and simple.. why would I want to "upgrade" to something BECAUSE it is new?? So I can LEARN to tweak a new OS to run right??.. Im not that bored thanks .... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Finally, intelligence is not an issue b 4 you learned how to tweak a system did you consider yourself non-smart ??

Originally posted by ReddDogg:
Well, quite frankly, you can't say that just because your computer is 150 mhz slower yet your computer is faster that the os must be what is slowing it down. There are a crapload of variables that control how fast your computer is. Most important, don't use an oem version of Me. Second, what all is running in the system tray. I have Me running on a PII 300 laptop w/ 128 megs of brand name ram, with a lucent winmodem, 6 gig hard drive, xircom 10/100 nic, and a 24x cd rom drive, and it runs snappy enough for me. ME made it boot up faster, and it transfer's files across my network faster, because with 98se, it would only run 100 on the network about half of the time. Me is better for running games for some odd reason, and I love the easy to use system restore feature. Removing IE from teh system really speeded it up too, and i run strikly Opera 5.0 on it now.

Only downfall I have had with ME on this machine, is that I get disconnected more with my lt winmodem on low quality phone lines, were in 98se I stayed on all the time. However, I have found some modem extra settings to take care of that.

Quite frankly, I am glad ME is available, cause it is alot harder to screw up for dum dum users, and it runs nice when you tweak it for advanced users. ONly people whom it is not meant for is people who know enough not to screw up windows 98se, but aren't smart enough to tweak ME to run right. That is my opinion. You of course are entitled to your own.



------------------
lol...so I cant spell...

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-17-2000).]

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-17-2000).]

[the diff]

I'm curious to learn just what "tweaks" are available/necessary to fine tune WIN ME for the advanced user? Oh, I've not upgraded from WIN 98 on my new Dell, but considering it...

>> Quite frankly, I am glad ME is available, cause it is alot harder to
>> screw up for dum dum users, and it runs nice when you tweak it for
>> advanced users.



------------------
= diff =

[sea69]

theeeee diff.......

This is only MY opinion:

One of the reasons that you can plug in a DELL pc, turn it on and come back 10 years later and it will STILL be running just as you left it is that they only put PROVEN / Stable ( as far as micro-$haft can be..) versions of Windows platforms and browsers. For example on my last pc ( a dell- circa 1998) It came with win98se as well, also it had IE-5.01, instead of the numerous updates that were and now more are out there too. That browser is PROVEN, win98se is Proven, these are 'Stable'. This was the case with my new Compaq as well. ( but wish I had stuck with DELL !!!~)

I would offer for your consideration that " If it aint broke..... Don't 'fix' it !!! You have a NEW, Working, very reliable pc (dell)given all of the problems I have read posted in HERE and Many other places I FAIL to see where the upside for 'potential' 'improvements' or benifits of ME over win98.

If you are interested in taking things apart and putting them back together, I suggest you go to a 'Flea Market' or a local ' hock shop' and get an old system to 'play' with .. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif
You sound similiar to me LOL http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif I buy the best Power System avaialable on the Market.. and Then try to make it better hehehe....

Micro-$haft wants everyone to BUY all of the 'New' os's and 'upgrades'thats why they come out with new products for people to Purchase with the Name of the year in the title.. so we can be fooled into thinking we NEED these 'State of the Art'..new 'improved...etc..

Its called Marketing, and who can do it better than them ??

again this is only my opinion http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

ps- my 'Rule of thumb' is to give at Least a year for ANY micro-$haft product a year b 4 using it, so they can get the maximum amount of bugs out and Finally, we ALL were "dummies" @ one point.... thats why this sites here

------------------
lol...so I cant spell...

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-19-2000).]

[This message has been edited by sea69 (edited 12-19-2000).]

[Ivanko2000]

At this momment i have installed Windows ME in three computers, two from my work and one in my house, i have a PIII 866 overcloacked to 975 MHz, isn´t too much but works fine, well after i made the windows update Windows Me makes me a lot of errors, specially when i used Internet Explorer, since i did the update every error disappear, thats good for me because i choose first to install Windows 98 se, but it had a lot of problems, ME is a little bit stable, but i realistic: its Windows...

Ivan

[crussty]

I have recently installed Win ME on my pc and I find it runs very well. I have had a few minor problems but nothing serious. I chose to install it because I liked the "look" it provided. I have not had one fatal exception error so far and it looks as though we get along just fine.


Crussty http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[darm]

I have been using ME for a couple of months, and I must say I am impressed with it so far. I haven't had any problems whatsoever (unlike win 98).
Still, it's early days yet.