How and why did Windows ME suck?

It seems to be the common view that the later versions of Windows were improvements on the previous versions, with the exception of Windows ME.

Was it less stable, and/or less software worked properly on it? Were there user interface problems too?

Is it known to the general computing public why it had these problems, such as a design flaw or perhaps inadequate testing cycle?

Actually, I had very few problems with Windows ME.
The single biggest problem the Operating System had, was it’s need for resources. Windows ME preferred extra ram, and it required that you shut off any unneccessay apps running in the background, take up those precious resources.

I don’t think Win ME was particularly any more stable than previous versions, but I haven’t come across anything to make me feel it’s particularly less stable either.

I happen to like Win ME better than Win 98 for one big reason. Device support on Win 98 was a pain in the ass, especially when it came to USB devices. My theory is that a halfway trained monkey must have written the Win 98 “Add New Hardware Wizard”. I had to jump through hoops getting Win 98 to correctly install drivers for USB devices, and then still have them working if you unplugged and replugged devices into the USB ports. Win ME has always handled them just fine for me.

Win 2000 Pro and Win XP are clearly better than Win ME (in my opinion), but I don’t think Win ME was a step down from Win 98, like a lot of people think. Given the option between putting Win ME or Win 98 on a machine, I’ll choose Win ME.

I had 2 machines with WinME and they were the most unstable pieces of crap I’ve ever used. I got the stupid blue screen of death about a million times a day. One of the machines even crashed the first time I turned it on. I hated that friggin’ software. btw, one machine was a Pentium 3 and the other was an AMD processor. bleh. WinXP was a huge improvement.

Clutter.

Windows95 was a new start. Windows98 was Windows95 with a shitload of extensions and elaborations, but if your hardware wasn’t elderly it was still decently solid for its time (if not quite as nimble as '95), and for a desktop Windows OS. The server OS that Microsoft had going by then was much more stable (NT) but it was, again, a new start, and there were migration and compatibility issues if you wanted to run NT instead of '98 (or '95) as your desktop workstation OS.

WindowsME crammed yet another shitload of extensions and elaborations on top of '98, and the entire architecture was by now no longer new. The degree of stability that generated applause for Windows95 was considered sub-par by then, and all the additional bells and whistles each added another opportunity for something to go wrong, as well as simply tying up the processor cycles and making it sluggish and unresponsive. Also, the design folks were putting most of their attention on Windows2000 and WindowsXP, which were based on the NT kernel, so ME may not have been the best build it could’ve been. It was the last gasp of a dying sub-platform and it only had to be “good enough”.

That’s the take on it of a Mac person who has mostly dealt with Windows OS’s in emulation or on other folks’ hardware just in passing. Proverbial grains of salt and all that.

I think that the entire 9X series, of which ME was a part, kinda sucked.

ME was actually a better OS than 98 or 98Se if you stayed away from older DOS and wiindows software, and it had much better driver support for USB. It also had better multimedia, networking and internet support.

The problem was that multitasking older Windows & DOS software ( and there was tons of it out there) often caused ME to choke and blue screen as it gave up some backwards compatbility to implement some of it’s features. Plus ME was hyped like crazy as a truly new Windows OS (vs 98 etc) and it really wasn’t. It was more or less a tweak of 98 to fill the time/market gap until XP could be finished.

Well, yeah.

Unless you compare it to its predecessor, Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.

Or did you forget?

That latter was a reply to adam yax, not to astro

Well, I think that I only ever had one crash with 3.11, granted it cost me a 25 page research paper, but it was the only crash I had.

sniff Now you’ve gotten me all teary eyed and nostalgic! sniff

I used WinME for four years of college purely as a word processor and occasional game platform. In spite of its imperfections, I really enjoyed that computer.
Daizy nailed my experience, sometimes you just had to turn things off or everything moved like molasses.

WinME was a “stopgap” OS. MS hoped for the longest time that people (esp. businesses) would switch over to the WinNT line. WinXP was intended to be the final switchover OS to kill the Win9X line. But, as usual, it was running very, very late. MS had already stretched things out with Win98SE and needed something, anything, in their marketing brochures that said “recent” on it. Hence WinME. They put very little thought or effort into it. It really was rushed out and so testing was way too inadequate. In short, this is what you get when Marketing makes product decisions.

(The more cynical analysts suggest that WinME was deliberately bad to forever taint the Win9X line and convince people the WinNT line was the future. This is actually quite consistent with Bill Gates’ mentality.)

I used Windows ME for four years. With the exeption of being a resource hog, I never had a single problem that wasn’t the fault of my wife or (more likely) me. It was our first PC and it survived our learning curve until the fans died and hardware died. I’m now on a old (but never used) box running 2000 Pro and I’m cosidering downgrading back to ME.

Peace - DESK

When I was running ME on my home computer, I would get one to two crashes a week on average. I have had XP for years and it’s maybe crashed four times total if that.

Hi, I maintained a network that was mixed. 98 SE, ME, NT and a few 2000.
ME was less stable than 98 SE. It was a resource hog and the improvements it added were minor. To upgade an operating system and make it less stable was truly pathetic.
When given the chance we wiped and load XP pro or 2000.
We have been 9x free for 2 years now, thank god.

I still run 98SE on my old home PC’s otherwise XP.

My understanding about the shortcommings of ME was it pretended to be something it was not.

Win 95,95RC2,98, 98SE, and ME were all based on DOS (the ‘windows’ was just basically a DOS program. While WIN NT, 2000, and for that matter XP was built on a seperate OS (the NT kernal). ME tryed to simulate the NT kernal in a DOS enviroment. This meant (in this case) that you had very little access to the true OS.

ME was often compaired to a car with the hood wielded shut.

I’ve been running ME on my machine at home for quite a while (since shortly after it came out). I upgraded to it in the hopes that it would resolve some of the issues I was having with 98. Can’t remember if it really did, but the improvements in handling USB stuff and media were worth it (I think).

Haven’t really had too many problems. A few occasional resource issues, but other than that, not really too much. I don’t abuse this OS as much as the one we run at work (where I generally have at least 4 applications running simultaneously), but it’s not uncommon for me to have a browser (mostly Firefox) and a couple of other items open (Money and either a Microsoft or OpenOffice document of some sort). It’s not great, but I wouldn’t say it sucks…

GT

None of the drivers worded :frowning:

ME was good for running games that wouldn’t boot in my Win2K (dual boot system), but it was a bastard for anything else. I had no end of problems finding compatible drivers for my peripherals, and I had a weird issue where each time I disconnected from the internet (dial up), my keyboard would stop responding. And it was a non-USB keyboard, so that wasn’t a driver issue.

Nevermind the contstant BSoDs that came up all the time. At least 2K didn’t do that to me.