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My computer has windows ME, and seems pretty stable - I don't have any major problems with it.
But yet I am constantly hearing people say that windows ME is the worst OS ever made by Microsoft. A guy once told me that ME is worse than windows 95 even!
Is there any truth to this? If I bought windows XP, would I REALLY see a huge jump in system performance (any websites that have done benchmark comparisons would be usefull).
I have been running ME since it first came out, and in my opinion it is more stable than 98. Cant say nothing about XP. Other then the fact that I ran a program that I downloaded somewhere which tested your system, installed programs etc. for XP compatibility.
The price I would have had to pay to upgrade my non-capatible programs, was out of this world. It was just too much to pay for yet another M$$ update.
Besides I did not like the installation restrictions that Billy put in place with the XP operating system.
Just my two cents worth.
People that have installed XP might have a different opinion, but you would have to check out the XP forum for that and see what kinf of problems people have had with it.
No.Quote:
[i]I am constantly hearing people say that windows ME is the worst OS ever made by Microsoft. Is there any truth to this? [/B]
I am a user of xp.
I did use ME and I did have a lot of problems with it even though it had come pre-installed on the PC and therefore should have been compatible with everything installed. After 3 months and a lot of complaining and eventually writing to the Chairman of the manufacturing company was the pc replaced with a higher spec. machine using xp.
I find xp to be very good and I would not return to any previous os.
Just my pennyworth.
Opinions 4 Free :D
We all do different things[to computers] and have different needs I find Windows 2000 server best for me. If ME works great for you then ME is the best. I have customers that wouldn't give up AOL [yuk] for anything so for them AOL is the best [for them]
I've run 98, ME, 2000 Prof. and Win XP Prof. Personally I've had the worst luck with ME and the best luck with 2000. However, if ME works fine for you, then that's what you should run. If you want real stability, run linux :D
Altho our opinions have alot of weight on most questions asked here....This is one that it does not...what matters here is doest the system work for you...your mileage may vary....Me did not work very well for me....it has a huge memory leak that MS chose not to fix in any fashion so if you use graphics or audio editing programs like I do...you are headed for lots of reboots to reclaim the lost memory......I did like the system restore feature in ME well until I installed Norton Systemworks and that kills the restore........I personally think Windows 2000 Professional is the best OS I have seen......I can leave my machine running for days on end without having to reboot......now do I.....no....but I have tested it to see if it really worked....and it does.....just my 2ยข worth
Well, I'm used 3.1/95/98/2000/me/xp in my lifetime and I have to say that ME is the worst os I've used. It froze the most and constantly had problems in one way or another.
When 98 came out, everyone said it was a dog. When Me came out, word in the UK was "the best yet". Only later did people start to abuse it.
Bear these points in mind:
People tend to bitch about things they don't own.
More people own 98 than Me.
I'm not going to tell you which OS is best, but I will say this:
Most OEM installs are hopeless.
Rip it out and install your OS of choice yourself.
I to started with windows 3.1 graduated to windows 3.1 for workstations, (WOW!) anyone want to buy some floppies ? I have used 98 and ME.
I found not much difference between 98 and ME as far as stability goes. At present time we have two machines in the house running Windows 98 and three using ME.
I have to agree with that, all machines in the house were home build and the OS installed on a freshly formatted drive. with the swapfile and temporary internet files always on another drive or partition. Not on the "C" drive in other words. And they are stable machines with very few crashes two of them my sons and my daughters, have never had a crash yet going on for two years now. We DO shut them down when we go to bed every day.Quote:
I'm not going to tell you which OS is best, but I will say this: Most OEM installs are hopeless.
Rip it out and install your OS of choice yourself.
The machine giving us the most trouble and crashes, Yes, it is my HP N5490 laptop running an OEM version of ME. Next in line is my own machine, but you know it is a machine that has never had the side covers on the tower installed, since I am always "twiddeling with it," this according to my wife.
My present dream machine:
Windows ME - all upgrades and bullitins installed exept automatic update.
MOBO: Abit BD7II-RAID
P4 Northwood 2.20 GHZ processor.
512 MB DDR PC1700 memory stick.
PNY Gforce4 Ti 4600 video card
soundblaster live with an 80 wat speaker system
4 USB 2.0 and two firewire ports in rear of tower
4 USB 2.0 and four firewire ports in front of tower
two Maxtor 80GB 7200 RPM (RAID) harddrives.
3" front and back case fans.
one 40 GB Maxtor 7200 RPM for video work and storage.
350 wat power supply with auto regulated fan, spins faster as the temparature increases.
Philips DVD+RW 200i DVD burner
HP 9500i CD burner
Memorex 56X CD ROM.
Soon to come: within the next two weeks,
Viewsonic VG171 17" 1280x1024 0.264 LCD TFT Monitor
Oh yes, and the usual floppy. :D
All the machines are networked with an wireless HRF system.
and all share the same 785 MB ADSL connection.
The biggest problem with Me is that Microsoft overhyped it. They tried to claim it was much better than 98, but in reality it IS 98 with some added features. It would have been better if MS could have come out with a consumer version of 2000 instead. A "Windows 2000 Home Edition" would have been a much better received product.
I have a theory about ME's memory leak.
It seems to cache everything to RAM.
I've seen this happen:
1: Access a floppy disk.
2: Open a single file.
3: Copy entire disk to hard drive.
On point 3, there was no floppy access.
I can only assume that it cached the entire disk when I opened one file.
I've also seen it copy large amounts of data (50MB+) from a CD without spinning the disk.
(It had previously accessed the disk)
I'm not sure if this is typical, as my ME box has 1024MB of RAM and custom vcache settings.
Does anyone have any similar experiences?
Spiny
How did you manage to get ME to boot with more than 512 MB of ram. I bought two 512 MB DDR sticks, My motherboard supports two GB of memory. But my machine will not boot with both installed.
Removing either one of them, does not matter which one, computer boots OK without any problems. Even adding a 64 MB DDR stick results in a no boot.
Just curious !!! and
:confused:
well... here is my 2 cents worth!
IF you have QUALITY namebrand components in a CUSTOM built machine using the latest drivers... i have found Windows Me to be AS stable as Windows 2000 and XP!!! my children and mother and had a Windows Me based machine running PERFECTLY for going on TWO YEARS!!!
the people who HATE Me or it crashes on them... are USUALLY
Compaq, Packard-Hell, Dell, etc... (machines who have FINE Cases... but JUNK components in them!)
stan...
i DO wish they would have came out with Windows Me Second Edition though! :)
well its certaintly not their bestQuote:
Originally posted by Ice9
But yet I am constantly hearing people say that windows ME is the worst OS ever made by Microsoft. A guy once told me that ME is worse than windows 95 even!
Is there any truth to this?
if you want stability w/ function ... 2k is sweetness
I've found 98 SE and ME to be about the same. It's almost a toss up. Some new features in ME are kind of cool, but some of the features 98 had that were dropped or modified in ME are cool too. ME seems to work a slight bit better for me at detecting devices and installing drivers. But its MS DOS support for Windows is not as good.
I'd say generally that the older the O/S and the more people are still using it, the more known issues and bugs have been discovered and worked out around it. That is likely what gives 98 the edge, if anything. More people have it on their PCs and more issues with it are known and have work arounds.
I haven't had the privilege of XP yet, which some people tell me is the bomb. But the new thing is always the best in some people's eyes.
The short answer: I personally haven't had that many problems specifically with ME. But then I'm not running a lot of the most current hardware or games apps. And those are some things that can put the real demands on your O/S. But I've never heard of any O/S that didn't give somebody a bad problem at some time. When they come out with one like that, I'm definitely down! LOL ;)
Tharsis
try any version of dosQuote:
Originally posted by Tharsis
But I've never heard of any O/S that didn't give somebody a bad problem at some time. When they come out with one like that, I'm definitely down
;)
I have an old Tandy Coco III for sale.
17000 Hz 8606 processor.
512 K of RAM (32k useable by BASIC)
and two 51/4'' 360K FLOPPY DRIVES. wow.
12" RGB monitor with an 80 x 32 column screen
dirt cheap :D
To echo the thoughts of others here....if it's working great for you, then it's a great OS. A friend of mine has it on her Compaq laptop and she has all sorts of crashes, etc. My wife is running 98SE on an AMD 900TB with a low cost Amptron MOBO and it's only crashed twice in the last year! She uses it constantly, though mostly for Word, WordPerfect and AOL.
I run XP Pro on a couple of boxes at home and just love it. I had been using 2000 Pro but found it didn't like Photoshop very much. Photoshop tended to hang or lag temporarily, as did Dreamweaver and Illustrator, under 2000. No such trouble in XP Pro. By the way, my workstation at work has 2000 Pro and exhibits the same problems with Photoshop, DW and Illustrator. For those reasons I would definitely NOT recommend 2000 for a graphics station. Other than that, stability of 2000 vs XP is the same in my experience......rock steady.
I think that when people upgraded over problems they had with 98, they kept those same problems and it probably added a few because of it. I had very few problems with ME, but did have lots with 98 and 98SE.
Georgeq:
See that link in my post? That's how.
To save you the bother of working it out, it goes like this:
Open C:\Windows\System.ini
Find [vcache]
Add this below [vcache]
MinFileCache=131072
MaxFileCache=262144
ChunkSize=512
Now put the extra memory in.
You want it to look something like this:
(blah blah blah)
(blah blah blah)
(blah blah blah)
[vcache]
MinFileCache=131072
MaxFileCache=262144
ChunkSize=512
[(whatever comes next)]
(blah blah blah)
(blah blah blah)
(blah blah blah)
Does that fix it?
to: Spiny
Thanks for the info and the link, I have just yesterday returned the extra stick to memoryman for credit.
But I will get another one. At the present time my Vcache is just an empty folder.
I can always send it back if it does not work, they are going to love me overthere, but then I have bought memory fronm them when a 128MB stick of PC100 sold for about $ 300.00 also.
[vcache] is normally empty, that just means Windows is (mis)handling the virtual cache automatically.
Don't forget - the customer is always right, but they must be punished for their arrogance. Just ask Dogbert.
Spiny,
Me think you are absulutely positively 100 % right. You hit it right on the gazu, so to speak.
It is my honest opinion that Windows is (mis)handling a lot of issues very well.
My hat off to Billy Gates and his gang members.