-=PCTechTalk=- Re: OT: On Internet Radio........
- From: "don101" <don101@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:43:40 -0400
I remember everybody that had Win98 or Win98SE constantly complaining about
what a crappy OS it was. Memory leaks, system crashes, BSODs 3 or 4 times a
day etc etc. All those complaints went away after ME came out and everybody
switched back to Win98/98SE.
I think M$ released ME just to stop the complaints about 98/98SE and give
them time to cobble together the first release of XP.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Southerland" <larrysoutherland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 1:17 AM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: OT: On Internet Radio........
> Recalling my own experiences (and those of my friends) with Win ME(nace),
> Gman's experience was similar to our own: Installing the Windows ME
> upgrade
> onto a previously-working Windows 98 system. Reviewing my old notes (from
> my computer journals) from that period, the problems that I personally had
> centered on (1) sluggish performance; (2) driver problems (unless the
> driver
> was built into ME, obtaining ME-specific drivers for some of my devices
> was
> a problem); (3) software incompatibility (more so that when moving, for
> example, from 95 to 98) -- I spent a lot of time and money purchasing new
> versions of utility programs and several other software packages so that
> they would run (in theory) under ME; and (4) since ME was so short-lived,
> getting books to help track down problems was an issue -- I eventually had
> to flatten the partition and do a clean installation of ME and learn to
> get
> rid of several programs that I had used for years (I remember Wordperfect
> 2000 Legal Edition having "issues" with ME, for example). I also remember
> adding more memory to the machine to make it run less sluggishly. I also
> have notes about a lot of BSODs (Blue Screens of Death) under WinME; part
> of
> this was due to the "DLL hell" created by trying to get drivers to work
> with
> ME (e.g., some Win9x drivers would work with ME; many would not -- it was
> a
> "crap shoot"). I seem to remember that one of ME's claims to fame was
> that
> it supposedly doubled the amount of certain blocks of resources (GDI and
> heap memory) from 64 Megs to 128 Megs, but this later turned out to be
> FUD.
> Being a "heavy user" of Windows (actually, of computers) since they first
> came out, I, understandably, saw a lot of BSODs, often caused by running
> out
> of GDI and heap resources (and "memory leaks" as closed applications
> didn't
> fully release memory back to the pool). That being said, I never even
> made
> it to the 49.7 day mark to see if my system would have been affected by
> that
> bug; I'd have to reboot (or be rebooted) every week or so (at the latest).
> (OTOH: my copy of OS/2 ran for 12 months without having to be rebooted and
> I
> rebooted it by choice at that point).
>
> I want to make clear that I wasn't basing my assessment *entirely* on what
> the computer pundits wrote (or have subsequently written) about ME. I
> wasted about 8 months trying to live with an ME-based system; I eventually
> switched to Win2K (I ran Windows 98 in a separate partition using
> Partition
> Magic so that apps (e.g., games) that didn't like Win2K could be run. I
> only posted the article to confirm from an independent source (after the
> fact) that the vast majority of users had "bad experiences" with the OS.
> ME
> was probably one of the most short-lived products M$ ever put out (right
> up
> there with "Bob"). I know one of the people who worked on the development
> of ME at M$ as a programmer during that time as an intern. He did not
> have
> a lot of nice things to say about ME or M$. He was the first to confirm
> that M$ often releases products "before their time" because of "cash flow"
> concerns. (He is now a store manager at a local Office Depot.)
>
> I am glad that Jo Ann's experience with ME was so "uneventful." I believe
> that Gman's observation is correct -- her results may most-likely be
> traced
> back to having purchased it on a pre-built (and therefore pretested)
> system:
> no device driver issues; maybe most of the apps she used coming
> preinstalled
> on the system (e.g., Works Suite???), etc. Other people were,
> unfortunately, not so lucky. ;-(
>
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