ME - It (Only) Just Works (Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition)

Name: bave

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Product:	Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
Date:	21/05/01 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick Booting, Some Nice Features, Only £40 if you have '98

Disadvantages: Some Drivers hate it, They've hidden DOS, Feels like a kiddie-OS

Buying a PC late last year, I had the choice of Windows 98 Second Edition, or the brand-new Windows. Me being a sucker for something new opted for ME.

Whoops. First off, ME does boot quicker which is always a god-send. But, it seemed to hate most of the drivers I had, and it was a a matter of time before i was able to put together a decent system.

First of all ME didn't like my Sound Blaster drivers and often caused Blue Screens on shut down. It also didn't take too kindly to my GeForce drivers. Since then the publishers have released newer ones that seem to work fine.

There's not much in there to warrant an upgrade, especially from '98. The "Enhanced Video Editing" is basically Windows Movie maker which isn't especially good.

The new features include System Restore. Which I must admit worked great when some idiot decided to replace some files on my PC :) The downside is that it loves to eat disk space. after 2 weeks my "restore" folder was reaching the 600MB mark.

Also, in an effort to keep your system running "smoothly" microsoft have put in an auto-update feature that will connect to the windows update site for you and check to see if there are any updates. This can take several minutes and can happen at almost any time whilst you are in the internet. Luckily you can turn it off in the control panel.

One of the biggest problems i found was that they had "removed" DOS. The only way to get into REAL DOS is to use a boot disk. One of the problems which stems from this is that ScanDisk now runs after the Windows GUI has started, slowing it down a lot more.

I must admit that it is a lot more stable than its predecessors and quicker on the boot front. But with hind-sight I think i would have opted for the more-established Windows 98 Second Edition. Buy it if you're curious :)

Summary: