CharPikMar wrote:

Also supermium is a browser for windows xp and vista, check it out

edit: yay im the king

ma007rio wrote:

Should we also include Windows Neptune?

(love how the December 11 check is only for setup, because after install, it boots fine on a different date)

medians wrote:

ma007rio wrote:

Should we also include Windows Neptune?

(love how the December 11 check is only for setup, because after install, it boots fine on a different date)

I would include it, but I just didn't want to say “Windows 95/98/ME/2000/Neptune/Odyssey/every single OS relating to these” in the title

medians wrote:

LOL should I try Windows ME (I've never used it before, though I've used 95, 98, and 2000)

Flowermanvista from the past wrote:

20 years ago today, Windows Me became available to the general public, which, of course, generally derided it as a terribly slow and unstable followup to Windows 98 SE - some others essentially said that it was like Windows 98 Third Edition and questioned if the asking price was worth it, especially since you could get a number of Me's enhancements for free in Windows 98, like Media Player 7 and Internet Explorer 5.5. For many, Me's inability to boot to real-mode DOS like Windows 95 and 98 could was also a dealbreaker. At the same time, however, Me introduced a number of new features that would become mainstays in later Windows versions, such as System Restore and the On-Screen Keyboard.

In my experience installing it on my Pentium II computer, Me is actually not bad, shockingly enough. It's incredibly fast to start (it takes literally half the time of 98 to boot, even on the same computer with the same hard drive), it runs just fine, the many small usability improvements, like being able to right click and Open With on any file (which you can't do in 98) are a nice touch, and the Windows 2000 visual appearance makes it more “fresh and modern”, in a sense. I'm also a big fan of Me's larger, more extensive driver library, giving much better USB support out of the box.

I actually had very few programs that didn't work right on Me that had the same issues on 98, and I had no programs that outright refused to run - all of the issues I could pin specifically on Me were very minor. The pack-in graphics driver caused some stability issues, but that's NVidia's fault for writing a bad driver, and the issues resolved when I upgraded it to a later version. (FUTURE NOTE: I've also had plenty of issues with various other versions of the driver on Windows 98 SE - 71.94 won't even work at all, and sometimes I wonder if that card is even working right.) But none of this really matters because Me lacks the ability to boot to real-mode DOS without using a boot disk or third party hacks, which, for me personally, is a dealbreaker. Of course, as is the trend with Microsoft products over time, it has a bit more in the way of Microsoft bloat to deal with (its system requirements demand over twice the CPU speed and twice the RAM of 98 First Edition), although there wasn't really a measurable performance decrease in my experience.

I think the whole situation is best summed up by this quote from LGR in his video about Windows Me (with added redactions for Scratch): “Considering the weird point in time that Me came out in regards to things like low quality sound and graphics hardware, wonky 56k modems, terrible printer and scanner software, (redacted) made games, spinning hard disks, ill-advised airflow and cooling, mismatched drivers, of course the whole wild west of Internet garbage being downloaded on a regular basis, yeah. When you take that all into consideration, it's no wonder that I had a worse time back in the day, along with thousands of other users of Windows Me. Run enough garbage on any older Windows system and it's gonna slow to a crawl and die an unstable blue-screeny death. But, give it a quality set of components and carefully selected drivers and software, and Millennium Edition is fine.”

And I have to agree with that, but I also have my own thoughts on the matter: the way I see it, Me's reputation was gone the moment the first early reviewers started saying that Me wasn't all it was cracked up to be. From there on, it descended into an endless cycle of negative reviews, which caused users to attribute any Windows 9x moment (which 95 and 98 had as well), or any piece of software malfunctioning, or any other issue with their computer to Windows Me, thus triggering even more negative reviews, and this self fulfilling prophecy caused Me to go down in history as one of the worst Windows versions of all time - even though it's not really like that, at least in my experience. In essence, Me was “bad” because people thought it was bad.

So, yeah, Me isn't terrible. It's just fine - just do a backup before installing it if you're upgrading an existing retro system running Windows 95 or 98. There's always a chance your experience won't be quite as nice as mine was.

kip22s wrote:

What just happened???

kip22s wrote:

What just happened???

medians wrote:

LOL should I try Windows ME (I've never used it before, though I've used 95, 98, and 2000)

medians wrote:

kip22s wrote:

What just happened???

Uhm, what?