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Windows Millennium Edition (Me) is the latest in the pantheon of Microsoft Windows operating systems. Though its name may not make it clear, it follows in the line from Windows 95 and 98, which emphasized usage for game playing and other non-critical applications. Windows 2000, released earlier this year, was the successor to Windows NT, which put its emphasis on security and stability.

Microsoft had planned to merge the code base for the consumer and business versions of Windows by this point in time, but this won’t occur until the next release. This will allow consumers to enjoy the stability that Windows NT and especially Windows 2000 users experience. In the meantime Microsoft offers Windows Me as a transition to that promised day.

Windows Me can be viewed in two ways—what it offers the consumer and how it promotes Microsoft’s agenda. The advertised features are in the areas of digital media, home networking, and the latest Windows Internet and email clients. The unadvertised agenda is further weaning of users from DOS programs, and the promotion of Windows-only media formats.

What’s New

Windows Me is, in part, a convenience package that includes the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Windows’ email and newsgroup client Outlook Express (both now version 5.5). The only difference from IE 5.0 that a user might discern is the addition of a print preview function that Netscape has had for years. You may also notice minor bugs such as a tendency for IE 5.5 to march across the screen on subsequent invocations instead of staying put where you like it.

A major update that users will notice is in Windows Media Player. What used to be a utilitarian application for playing audio and video files is now a kitchen sink application that also plays CDs, maintains libraries of music files, displays visual effects, enables listening to Internet radio stations, accesses an online music guide for finding music downloads, and can even burn compilation CDs from music files on your hard drive. Note that it can’t encode music into the Internet’s and portable devices’ most popular music format, MP3 files, but instead locksyou into Windows media formats. Fortunately there are alternatives such as the excellent MusicMatch Jukebox.

Another touted addition is Windows Movie Maker. Although I don’t have a video camera, I do have a TV tuner in my PC, so I tried doing a video capture with Movie Maker, which saves the data in a Windows media format. The results were less than impressive with the sound out of sync with the video.

Perhaps I need one of those 1GHz processors to replace my 266 MHz Pentium II.) I also didn’t find the application as easy to use, for things like adding a musical soundtrack, as in Apple’s iMovie application, available on their iMac models. I didn’t stumble across any way to add movie titles, another iMovie feature. And you won’t be able to transfer your edited Movie Maker movie back out to your video camera. It’s only designed to create small, low-quality movies for posting on a Web site or perhaps emailing to someone. Your Mac-using friends won’t be able to view the Windows-only format though. If you don’t already have a late model PC, and are interested in home movie editing, you’re more likely to be pleased with the results you get on a new Mac, which has Firewire ports built in to connect to a digital video camera. And iMovie movies can be saved as QuickTime files which both Windows and Mac users can view.

There is an updated Home Networking Wizard that’s supposed to make it easier to set up a home network. I personally find Windows 2000 easier for setting up Internet Connection Sharing, where I only have to check one box on a page of the Network control panel, rather than going through several screens of a wizard.

Windows Me has one feature that battle-scarred Windows users may find attractive, called System Restore. About once a day the system will save your configuration of program files and registry settings, or you can manually save a restore point before installing a program or driver. This feature takes up quite a bit of space on your hard drive in a hidden folder, but this may be reasonable in an era of huge hard drives. Be careful, though, if you restore to an earlier configuration, because program files will be restored to earlier versions, or may be deleted if the program file was installed after the time of the restore point. So, for example, that large installation file you recently downloaded may be deleted if it’s not kept in a "safe" place, such as the My Documents folder.

What’s Missing

Budding Webmasters will probably miss the Personal Web Server that was included in Windows 98 but is absent in Me. Many users have reported problems installing or fully using PWS from other sources (such as the NT 4.0 Option Pack) on Windows Me. People in this category should take a look at Windows 2000 Professional, which does include a Web server.

The Microsoft Backup function is no longer part of the Windows installation, but can be found in the \add-ons\MSBackup folder on the Windows Me CD. Microsoft Fax is gone altogether.

There is no Plus! Pack specifically for Windows Me, although Me includes a few of the Plus! 98 features such as compressed (a.k.a Zip) folders and the Spider solitaire game. The extra desktop themes from Plus! 98 and the deluxe CD player are not included, and you won’t be able to install the Plus! 98 Pack without hacking the registry. You can, however, upgrade from Windows 98 with the Plus! 98 pack installed.

Booting into DOS mode from Windows is no longer available. If you need to run DOS games or other DOS programs that require direct access to the hardware, stick to Windows 95 or 98. Note that there is still a 16-bit code base in Windows Me, so don’t expect increased stability over Windows 9x, it’s just user access to the DOS code that has been removed. There is still a DOS prompt available, which may be suitable for running DOS programs that don’t require direct access to hardware. As an experiment I started up an old DOS game. My screen went black, the game didn’t come up, and Windows disappeared. All I could do to recover was hit the reset button. The CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files have essentially been eliminated. If you had statements in these startup files to help run your old software, there may be equivalents that go into the SYSTEM.INI file.

The Ugly

I’m no great fan of Windows 98, but Windows Me seems a step backward in some respects. After first installing Windows Me, I tried opening the Help. It seemed to take forever to come up. When I timed it later, I found it took an unacceptable 45 seconds! I later accidentally found a way to speed it up. I had read on one of the newsgroups that the Disk Defragmenter had been speeded up in Windows Me, so I tried it. It turns out that it cut my Help start time down to 15 seconds, which is tolerable, but nothing to brag about.

I also find the system to be jerky in operation on a machine where I have plenty of RAM (192 MB). By contrast, when I run Windows 2000 on the same machine, I find the system to be very smooth and responsive. I usually idle somewhere near 0% CPU under Windows 2000 when I’m not doing much. Mysteriously, with Windows Me I idle between 25 to 75% CPU, according to System Monitor even after closing down as many tasks as possible.

Windows Me’s one great improvement is in boot time, which on my machine takes only 30 seconds to get to a functional desktop. This is fortunate because Windows Me seems to prompt you to reboot for even the smallest configuration changes. This is the opposite strategy of Windows 2000, which rarely requires you to reboot, but takes much longer to boot than Windows Me.
One thing that you used to be able to count on with Windows 95 and 98 is essentially universal hardware driver support. If a piece of hardware existed, it almost by definition was supported under Windows 9x. It was Windows NT where you had to be careful to find out if a piece of hardware was supported. Now the tables are starting to turn. When I installed Windows 2000 earlier this year, I found every piece of hardware I had was supported with a built-in driver. I was shocked to find out that when I installed Windows Me, there were no built-in drivers for my video card, network card, or laser printer. I had or was able to download drivers for each of these, but I don’t consider that user-friendly for an operating system marketed to home users. I also found it odd that I first had to install a generic modem driver before I could later select a driver for my specific modem. Why not show the complete selection list up front?

System Requirements and Pricing

Microsoft states that you need at least a 150 MHz Pentium processor and 32 MB of RAM to run Windows Me. I suspect 64 MB is a more realistic minimum, and you may not be really happy with less than 128 MB. The upgrade list price for Windows 95 and 98 users is $109. There is also a special “limited-time” upgrade edition just for Windows 98 users priced at $59.95.

Recommendation

This is not Microsoft’s shining hour in operating system releases. It’s especially disappointing after the release of Windows 2000 earlier this year, which is easily the best operating system Microsoft has ever released. Windows Me is not so bad that I would recommend it over Windows 98 on a new computer, but I can’t recommend that anyone spend good money on upgrading from Window 95 or 98.Remember that the latest Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player can be downloaded for free or ordered on CD-ROM and installed on your existing Windows system (although Windows Media Player requires at least Windows 98).

Microsoft is targeting Windows Me towards home users, and Windows 2000 towards business users. While I agree that companies should steer clear of Windows Me, I don’t agree that Windows Me is the best solution for all home users. Windows 2000 is far more stable, and if a home user is willing to do a little research to see if his/her favorite hardware and peripherals are supported, it may be a better option for some.