It’s official: On PC World’s list of the 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time, AOL is #1 and Windows Millennium Edition is #4. Go read the Complete List of Losers and giggle.
AOL sucks more than Windows Me
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7 thoughts on “AOL sucks more than Windows Me”
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Ed Bott 
I never understood the complaints over Windows ME. Granted Windows 2000 and XP are light years ahead of it, both were light years ahead of 98.
Working for a Computer OEM we sold ME for over a year before XP came out and had no specific end user issues over 98. Windows Millenium merely required Millenium compatible drivers and sometimes BIOS updates, which werely generally needed for Windows 2000 and XP support anyway. I found Windows ME more idiot proof than 98 with features like system restore ect…
Windows ME to me was nothing but 98 with all the patches and some new features like System Restore and Windows Media player.
To tell you the truth ME came out about the same time we started seeing various other problems. A combination of Mainboard manufacturing moving to the Chinese Mainland, a massive increase in Virus infections and the emergence of the super cheap PC.
No doubt people were having PC problems but next to none were related to Windows ME.
Yea, I think I’m one of the few people ever not to have any real problems during the ME years. It was good to me, so much so that I was able to wait until XP-SP1 came out before upgrading.
Zane, you may be the ONLY person not to have trouble with Windows Me. My problems with Windows didn’t disappear until Windows 2000 and especially XP.
Ken,
You can count my couple of thousands of clients that got ME that year in.
I always challenge anyone who had ME problems to prove it was the OS that caused them and not a noncompatible driver, BIOS, Virus or faulty or misconfigured hardware.
I remember some guy coming in complaining how much crap ME was because it kept locking up his overclocked system… Please.
You have to remember too, that this was also around the time the Internet started to really take off and everyone started giving everyone else advice. System Locked Up? Cause = Windows ME. Hard Drive Crashed? Cause = Windows ME. Data Deleted? Cause = Windows ME. I can go on forever.
Probably for eternity people will blame the wrong cause for any problem. There are legitimate issues relating to Windows ME in the Microsoft Knowledgebase but you always have legitimate issues with any OS. The common issues people were having with Windows ME were not these but lied elsewhere. I know because I used to fix them.
Regardless Windows 2000 was IMO the true break out OS for Microsoft it took NT’s stability and meshed it with 98/ME useability. Which was further refined in XP. To this day I refuse to use any OS other than Windows 2000 or XP.
hey ed:
thanks for the shout out for my piece, I appreciate it.
I also dig the goatee. You look like Rip Torn — but on a good day.
be well,
dt
The largest problem with Millenium edition was how it HANDLED errors. I’m not sure if it had more bugs than windows 98, but it’s seriously the only operating system i’ve seen lock the whole computer, simply because you opened an application, clicked the X by accident, and went to re-open the program before it finished shutting down. XP and 2000 have crashes, but they rarely cause the entire operating system to become unresponsive.
People hated ME because it failed to do anything that 98 didn’t already do just as well, except soak the consumer for more money on a product that basically was just a facelift.
XP… now THAT’s how you write an operating system