I been told for the last few years that windows ME is rubbish and that i should have brought a new copy of windows XP or 2000 when i brought my computer about 3 years ago, but i have installed most of the fixes and pathches for ME and it has allways ran fine on my system, about 3 month ago i decided to upgrade to windows 2000 but its been causing me lots of problems. it keeps crashing even though everything is compatible with it, and i have SP4 on and all the hotfixes and patches. the internet is a real problem as it always gets viruses after a couple of days even with the latest version of norton anti viruses and firewall, and yesterday when i went to delete a video file dr watson got corrupted and now the hole system is corrupted, win 2000 has been so bad i have had to do 3 fresh installs in a week, i have decided to go back to ME but now my friends are telling me to go for XP but i think ishould just stay with ME for now. what do you guy's thing

it would be ood to go to xp but remember it catches plenty of viruses aswell.use what works for u.

Being in the 9x forum here, I recommend 98SE over ME.

You'd be best to go with Windows XP. The NT based kernel is far better than the one from Windows ME. Windows ME used a "hybrid" 9x/2000 based kernel.

Memory management in Windows 9x/ME is terrible as well. You can barely do things without having to reboot numerous times each day. Thus the issues with memory management also reduces stability.

I upgraded to Windows XP SP2 with my newest machine and it has been an excellent OS. The only time I see a BSoD is when the screensaver I use comes on.

Also, all the major (and minor) products, games, and much more are designed with XP (and now Vista) in mind; so that opens a whole world of opportunity to you.

Although i am a Newbie. I would suggest to go back to ME, and wait for Vista.

If your computer is 3 years old, the best is w98SE (+uSP2 and other patches and updates (+++)).
I DO NOT recommand W98 First Edition however.
The commedian above who said that you need to reboot every 1/2 an hour refered to W98FE. The w98SE+++ doesn't have these problems anymore or very rarely.

XP is slow, bloat, complicated and may not accept old drivers.
The advantage of XP is that newest softwares, games and hardware sometimes won't run on w98 or ME.

About safety w98+++ is the safest even without firewall, if you take XP don't contemplate anything below XP SP2+recent updates+firewall+antiviruses.
There is no advantage of 2000 over XP and it might be even less safe than XP SP2.

ME, AFAIK, is the worse M$ OS ever.

If you can get w98SE and add the free uSP2.01a and recent updates, that's the way to go.

Second solution Xp SP2+updates+firewall+antiviruses+SafeXP

Last solution ME or 2000.

3 years old, this is not very good specification of your computer. It may be rather powerfull with 2.66 GHz Pentium 4 processor or with Athlon XP 2200+, or it may be weaker box with Celeron 1.8 GHz or AMD Duron 1.0 GHz, this was the range in the middle of 2003. The size of the RAM is importanat too.

You will see better responsiveness with Windows 98 SE or with Windows Me in comparison to 2000/XP.
Windows 2000 will have rather long boot time.
Windows XP should acceptable on this hardware, especially if you have 256M (or better 512M) of RAM.
There are many new applications that are not compatible with 98SE/ME and some even with Windows 2000.

It's up to you what is your priority. If you need the highest speed and don't need newest versions of all programs, then 98SE is good choice. If you prefer to be able to run newer applications and a bit slower response is not so big problem for you, I'd recommend fine tuned Windows XP, with removed all unnecessary components and services (look for nlite) - but this is discussion for other forum. I'd never recommend Windows 2000.

Petr

I'd be interested knowing why you say that.

Couldn't agree more. Unstable and has tons of disfunctions

duffgun sorry you are having so much trouble with your box. I am using a windows 2000 upgraded with HFSLIP and I am very happy with it. IE is gone and firefox is my browser. I went to one of those internet sites where they check to see if they can attack it.... WELL I am secure
I dont know your serfing habits or if you are into modding an OS but I would reccomend the setup I got.

I guess it all depends on the use you make of a PC and how you "keep" it.

Just for the record I run Win2k since 2003 on this PC, and previously had it run another 3 years on a previous one and NEVER re-installed on either machine, nor EVER had a BSOD.

jaclaz

Run Windows XP if your machine can handle it.

I'll never recommend Windows ME.

Ma che dice? You never had a BSOD? Man you're a lucky one... My laptop didn't like 2k so it had to go...

Just for the record I ran millennium for years with no trouble. I use 2000 now for ntfs and large disc support.

There is large disc support on Windows ME now as I guess you don't ignore. I personally would not swap it for another OS. Of course it has no system restore and system file protection. But to truly enjoy it I recommend at least a 2ghz cpu and 1GB of RAM. That's why I laugh when MS says you can run Vista on a 800MHz chip. Sure I could also run ME or 98 on a P133...

I had considered eventually switching to 2k because of dual core cpus support but my own experience with 2k, albeit very brief, hasn't been a pleasant one.

Not saying it is a bad system as I haven't enough experience with it. I managed to screw it faster than when I started with win 95 and maintenance recovery turned out to be quite problematic/difficult so I gave up as I was just trying it out of curiosity and not out of need.

I have XP but I have never installed it. It just covers my use of a Live XP CD that I use from time to time.

??? I don't get this.... I have Mobile Siemens Scenic 700/710 on 133MHz and Win98 works like a dream... NO TWEAKS! So i don't see the problem...

Do you have the feeling that a folder on your desktop on which you double click is actually opened before you have finished to click it ?

Can you add ten shell extensions and not feel a difference as to the context menu display speed when it set to no delay ?

Can you run ten third party background tasks and not feel a difference as to the speed of operation of your OS ?

Etc...

You probably get my point better now.

Well i do have the third problem... But i think that we discuss stability of ME, and if someone has 1gb of RAM he will surely install WinXP on it...
It's rather stupid to have ME on a machine like that (2GHz proc. and 1GB RAM) - But this is only my personal opinion... I'm against ME so much because when I had it installed my eyes got stuck on BSOD every ten minutes or so....

98SE also works very well on a 486DX2-66. I used that for a few years before upgrading to a P233MMX overclocked to 266, then a PII 450 and finally the P4 4.17GHz now.

My experience. Both Windows 2000 and Windows XP should be fine tuned to achieve really good system. My experience is that Windows XP (NT 5.1) is better base for it than Windows 2000 (NT 5.0). You can set XP to look like 2000 (and Me) and you will have the ability to use more programs, like more secure IE6 with pop-up blocker, IE7, MP10, etc. Of course, you can use also 3rd party programs on Windows 2000 but you have just broader range of choices on Windows XP. Wider hardware support. Shorter boot time. And if you are looking for help, there are 13 times more XP users than 2000 users so you have better chance with XP to find it.

For people who already use Windows 2000 and are satisfied with them I'd not recommend to switch to XP but if you have the choice to start with 2000 or XP I recommend XP.

BTW, interesting numbers here: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=5
but even more interesting would be absolute numbers than the share.

Petr

Nobody is using the OS alone. The recommended hardware configuration is mostly dependent on the application used and not on OS itself. It is true that NT5.x systems (2K,XP) consume more resources than Win4.x (95/98/Me) systems but it may not be so important if you use resource intensive applications.

Petr

Wasn't the main subject WINDOWS ME!!! or Windows XP... Everybody (even I) started talking about Win2k - and I think that there is a mayor mistake cuzz ME is 9x and 2k is NT-based system... Right? So the answer to the question in title of the thread is WinXP for new machine if you need NTFS partition... I think i'm right....

Upgrade? You should never upgrade an install of 9x or ME to 2000 or XP.

I'm not a techie or anything, just personnal opinion here

don't ever install ME, I had so much trouble I went back to 98SE.

I now run winXP SP2 and everything is fine, it's by far the best release to date and hope vista will only be better


oh and don't use norton antivirus, if you want to stay clean use nod32 it's waaayyyyyyy better

I think you will agree that "works like a dream" cannot be defined an objective benchmark measure, I suspect that other people may find your "dream" a "nightmare".


In my experience, the single hardware feature that affects the most the behaviour of a full Win98 SE is the amount of memory, not really the processor speed.
If you have less than 64 Mbytes of memory, Win98 becomes slowish, due to swapping to HD.
I have found that with 32 Mbytes or less, you really see the difference if you use 98lite or another means to use the core W95 files.


Exactly my thought , though about:

You have to understand that marketshare, while having a direct relationship with availability of help and support, has NO relationship whatsoever with quality of the product.
Consider this:
Windows 2000 came out at the beginning of 2000, at the time Microsoft marketing had things divided as follows:
a. Professional users should MIGRATE from NT4 to Win2K
b. New professional system should have Win2K
c. Consumer systems should have WinME, that came out in summer 2000, as the NT technology is too complex for them, almost every PC sold in 2000/2001 had ME pre-installed

Shortly after, the idea was completely changed:
Windows XP came out at the end of 2001 and was pre-installed, either in home or pro version, to almost every single PC sold afterwards.

Windows 2K was not taken out of the market, mainly because until SP1 came out, no professional would have even thought of "upgrading" to XP, I bought my latest licenses for 2k in 2004.

SO you cannot really compare the numbers of ME or 2000 with those of other systems:
1) ME came pre-installed for a short period, around 1 and a half year
2) 2K was very rarely pre-installed, and it's main "lifetime" was about two years
3) XP, either home or pro, came pre installed since end of 2001 till today, and probably for several months still, until the release of Vista
4) In the period since 2000 up to now, the number of PC's in households has greatly increased, today alost everyone has a PC, 5 years ago, if you think about it, it was not so.

These are just partial data:
1997 - http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/c...ort97/tab01.pdf
2003 - http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/c...2003/tab01A.xls

But a "penetration" rate from 36.6% to 61.8% hints about the trend quite well, here are more numbers:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/data/statcomputers.htm

jaclaz

You can also very much feel the difference between 512 MB and 1GB for still the same reason you say. Almost day and night if you use your PC a bit intensively. Still speaking about 98SE/ME of course.

basically, it all comes down to your hardware (speed or chipset) running windows on 2 computers both with the same speed hardware, but different chipsets (IE a P4 1.8ghz and an Athlon 1.8ghz) the two computers can act totally different.

for instance, my compaq armada 1700 handles windows 9x amazingly (very speedy given its specs, PII 233 64mb ram) on the other hand, my dell inspiron 7000's (PII 366, 256/384mb ram) which were both designed for win98, run it terribly. very slow, and took forever to boot up. both of those laptops handle 2000/XP amazingly well given their specs.

currently, i run 4 machines all running NT based OS's.

the first being my desktop, an AMD Athlon XP 1800 with 640MB of ram. XP runs on that just fine, does what i need.

my 2 dell inspiron 7000's are currently both running an OEM copy of XP pro SP2 and they both handle it perfectly fine. for what i do anyway. they start up in under a minute (which is more than acceptable imo)

my compaq armada 1700 being the last one, its currently running windows 2000 nLited. the original install cd is 83mb and the default install is under 300mb (excluding page file and hibernation file) when it starts, it uses roughly 28mb of ram, sometimes can go below 26 depending on what im doing. the only drawback to this computer, is the screen size. being 800 by 600, it leaves a lot to be desired in the way of screen space.

anyway, it really depends on the computer model you have, what you want to do, and how intensive you will be on the computer.

ME imo, was an alright os. sure it had it's flaws, but hey, what OS doesn't? i never had any major problems with it, but then again, i don't do too much on my computers. all i do, is internet, IM, and E-mail (and the odd game or two)

ill stick with the NT based OS's right now because i have made a lot of advances in handling/tweaking them. but, if you want an all around, fast os, use windows 98SE with the USP2. if your a little bit more advanced, give nLite and windows 2000 SP4 a try.

you'll be surprised with what you can acheive.

If you are going to use the pc for web browsing ordinary day to day jobs, win98se would probably give you the most pleasant experience, winme or win2k after that. If you want to use or upgrade your pc so you can do the same thing, slower if you do not upgrade, if your pc has a slower cpu (by todays standards) a lower amount of ram (by todays standards) upgrade your power supply and use winxp (login to its drm and monthly update schedule, I think they have stopped its phone home mechanism now after all the complaints)
You can burn as much power as you like to do everyday tasks, it all depends on your friends egos
.

i ran m.e for around 3 years. i had no trouble with it at all. then my children wanted xp as thats what they were using at school. and thats when the problems started , pc running slow, although it was a 1.1, with 512 sdram. 40gig hard drive. virus after virus crashes physical dumps, the list is endless.now i use linux but keep a small pc running 98 se for the odd thing i cant do on my other computers

I'd say for the specs of the machine, I'd go with XP all the way. Now I'm not one of those that bashes ME, it has it's place even with it's faults, but for YOUR system and specs, I see no reason to use it.

As to win 2000 and others, I used win 2000 professionally as a cad platform when it was first released, upgrading from NT 3.5 and NT 4.0. It was WAY more user friendly than NT ever was; NT seemed not to allow you to do anything, you searched and searched through menues and options, but almost always came out short. Win 2000 ended that, gave you almost as much freedom as you had in win 98. It's main shortcomings was LONG boot time with the hardware at the time of release. ( Pentium 300 Mhz, 128 Mb ram, in my case.) Main advantage over win 9X at the time; stability, not needing to reboot frequently through a days work. As was the case with NT.

9X family had at the time way more compatability with programs, games, hardware etc. That is as of now fast swithching over to the 2000/XP side.

Small memory footprint of the 9X family is what makes it still interesting to use. In my personal case, I just got an old lapop for free; 266Mhz, 32 megs ram(max 128Mb), 4 Gb disc, win 98 FE. On a machine like this, I'd never consider win 2000 or XP. They simply make it so slow you start want to kill yourself, or the machine. For users looking for a somewhat fresher look than what win 98 has, I'd say ME has it's place. I personally consider to upgrade this laptop (I'm writing on now) to ME.

I also have a workstation running XP with all the bells and whistles, but I'd still want to put this old laptop to good use. It was never usable for workstation duties from the beginning anyhow, I just want to preserve the use it has always given it's owners from day one, with a bit fresher look to it.

I have had ME installed in the past on old machines, and it works well if you just go through the quirks it has and shut off a few things. IMO compared to 98se, ME has alot more installed that would need to be additionly installed on a 98 platform, like pic viewer, better usb support, tweak UI etc.

I started out with a commodore 64 in my early teens, and have gone through ALL windows editions from win 1.0 through vista beta. For older hardware like mine, ME has it's place.

Besides, I just want to use it as a coffee table machine to get online whenever I feel the urge to read up on somwthing, or get movie tickets or whatever. It would handle these duties with ME very well I think.

-along with age, the QUALITY of the hardware can be an important factor when choosing an OS, too...
.
-as evidenced by my experience with two computers, one old (p3-866mhz, 384mb SDRAM, new in 2000, came w/winME but ran it soooo bad it took me 3 days right out of the box just to get the pre-loaded ME to boot properly!) w/good quality intel I815EP mobo, and one newer (p4-1.8ghz CELERON [ick!], 512mb DDR, new in 2003) w/cheapo Matsonic MS9327E+ (sis 650 chipset) mobo... -both dual-boot w98se & winxp pro sp2, but the old puter runs xp MUCH better, faster, and the newer puter seems to like win98se MUCH better than xp, no matter what I do to it/them... (probably an issue w/lousy drivers for the lousy newer mobo, altho I've spent WEEKS experimenting w/every possible driver & bios combination/tweaks/etc I could find for the dam thing ; NEVER settle for a cheapo mobo! )
...
-so, I use the new(er) puter w/98se as my Primary, and the old one w/xp when I need to... kinda backwards, huh?
.
{---this stuff is probably obvious/given, but just mentioning...}
>;]

what is the final verdict?