-=PCTechTalk=- Re: OT: On Internet Radio........
- From: "Larry Southerland"<larrysoutherland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:17:09 -0400
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. ;-(
-----Original Message-----
From: pctechtalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pctechtalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of GMan
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 12:21 AM
To: pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: OT: On Internet Radio........
Jo Ann,
You've hit on the difference yourself without hurting my theory one bit.
The difference is that yours came with ME preinstalled (and I think Intel
was making the switch over to PIII CPUs at the same time). The rest of the
world and I tried installing it on our well running 98 & 98SE systems
because MS never pushed the idea that it might not work so well on older
devices. I believe mine had a PII 350 in it with 128MB of SDRAM. The real
telling part of it all is that Win2000 ran nearly as well as 98SE on it, but
ME made it choke. Go figure. lol
I still have that computer (with 512MB of RAM) and use Win2K for testing
other (usually newer) system's networking capabilities. :O)
Peace,
G
http://tinyurl.com/ypbuue
"The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask!"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jo Ann Weaver" <bookworm54@xxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2008 11:06 PM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: OT: On Internet Radio........
> GMan,
>
> I hate to blow your theory, but that was not the case. When I got it new,
> my
> mass produced IBM had a was definitely
> not high end. I believe the CPU was like 667 mgh and I know it had only 64
> megs of RAM, preloaded with ME. I will admit it was a lot faster when I
> added
> another 128 stick, but it ran ok on 64 till I started putting more
> programs
> on it.
>
> Jo Ann
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