Windows ME logo
Well, its September 14th and another release of the Microsoft’s world dominant operating system is upon us. Available in your shops today is Microsoft’s latest release. The OEM version has been out for about a month now, but the upgrade is now available for you to purchase for around £80. Why does any serious gamer care about an operating system I hear you cry? Well I will stake my life on it that 95% of you play all your PC games on some form of Windows operating system. This article will tell you whether or not it is worth the £40 you’ll end up paying for it.
Minimum Specifications
The first thing that struck me about Windows ME, are Microsoft’s minimum specifications for the operating system. The system requirements from the Microsoft web site are as follows:
That is some serious hardware. You have got to question why you need a sound card, modem, and speakers just to run an operating system. Well, we tested the ‘minimum specifications’ and it turns out that Microsoft should have listed them, as ‘recommended’ specifications as Windows ME will run quite happily without a sound card, modem or speakers. Another thing that is striking about Microsoft’s specifications is the amount of disk space your installation will gobble up. If you still have an old system with a 1 or 2 gig disk then you’re going to need an upgrade as Windows ME will eat up a good 500MB of your hard disk. For comparison, Windows 98 took up 180MB on first installation and Windows 95 only 100MB. Microsoft will tell us all that the large amount of space required is needed to sustain all the new features which may be true but it also raises questions that if any of their other operating systems are anything to go by, more code means more bugs. I’ll get to those later though.
Installation
Well, you will be glad to know that Windows ME is the easiest operating system ever to set up and install onto you’re system. The mandatory questions are asked at the start, but after that you can sit back and relax while Windows ME installs and sets itself up on your system. Hardware drivers disks shouldn’t have to be inserted at any point in the installation, unless you have some brand spanking new hardware that it can’t find. It detects and sets up most systems with a correct set of drivers that seem to function correctly. While you install you can make yourself a cup of tea and then probably go for a quick jog down to the newsagents to get the morning paper as it takes almost an hour to copy all the files. Once its finished though, you should have all the hardware correctly detected and installed and Windows booting in much quicker time than Windows 98.
New Features
There are plenty of new features that come with Windows ME. Windows Media Player 7 adds new features such as an MP3 to your desktop. You can put yourself in the director’s chair with Windows Movie Maker. Import and edit video from your analogue or digital camcorder. Then splice scenes easily or add graphics, narration, and musical scores. When you’re done, you can share your creation with friends and family via e-mail or on a Web site. A handy new feature is the way in which you can browse through your pictures on Windows ME. You can view the entire contents of your picture folder viewing a preview of the image before you select the image you want. This can make finding that image you downloaded last night a cinch.
Windows ME Image Browser
Home networking has also been improved since Windows 98. If you have a network at home then sharing devices between two or more computers is simple with the home networking wizard that simply sets it up for you. You can even share the internet connection across the network, although this is harder to set up than Microsoft like to make you believe.
Windows ME comes complete with the latest release of Internet Explorer 5.5 which makes browsing the web even easier. Outlook Express 5.5 is also included which is also extremely easy to set up your multiple e-mail accounts.
Speed
There is no doubt, that if you want an operating system that will run on a minimal PC (Pentium) then a release of Windows 95 or 98 is the system for you. Windows ME has a host of new features but they eat at your disk space, memory and CPU power like no other operating system before it. We tested it on a 450MHz AMD K6-2 with 128Mb of RAM and I can still catch Windows ME running off the swap file on the disk. It requires a good PC to run efficiently and if you don’t have one then your best off with Windows 98 or a hardware upgrade. I haven’t tried to run Windows ME on a 150MHz Pentium, but I wouldn’t want to either.
Stability
Does Windows ME crash? The simple answer is yes. It is about as stable as Windows 98. The dreaded blue screen appears now again when you try to run too many programs and explorer is still prone to the odd fatal error. If you want a system that will multitask properly and run more than about 5 applications at once then Windows has never been very good. For most purposes though, games and word processing run quickly and sturdily under Windows ME. As far as running games goes, the operating system is just as stable as Windows 98 and makes it easy to network computers together so having a LAN party is a breeze to set up under Windows ME.
The Verdict
To be honest the host of new features supplied by the latest Microsoft operating system are only needed for those people who want to stay up to date with the latest releases of operating systems. This isn’t, and was never intended to be a next generation operating system representing the kind of breakthrough that was made when Microsoft released Windows 95. It is a host of bug fixes and enhancements that Microsoft hopes will end the Win9x chain of operating systems. Everything that Windows ME does can be set up to run on Windows 98, if you know where to download a good MP3 player from, and understand how to set up a network. If you are a novice with a new computer that is fast, and want an easy to set up operating system then Windows ME is for you. However, if you are still running Windows 98 on an old Pentium then the upgrade will slow your computer down and, frankly, add only a host of gadgets and gimmicks, and still no system stability, to what is still Windows 98.