when you think of the worst version of Windows ever you might think of Vista
which performed sluggishly out of the box or 98 which was so ridden with bugs
that Microsoft was forced to release a second edition or even Windows 8 in
which Microsoft axed the much beloved start menu and instead tried to shove a
mosaic of gimmicky live tiles down our throats it was very uncomfortable but
aside from these Greatest Hits One Windows version stands Head and
Shoulders Above the Rest as a monument to failure Windows Millennium Edition
better known as Windows me or Windows me
for those who refuse to buy into the cheesy marketing but why was it so bad
Microsoft had plenty of time to learn from common gripes people had with
Windows 95 and 98 the biggest one being how often the OS would blue screen or
straight up crash to be fair to Microsoft they did have a pretty good
solution to this move home users onto a version of Windows built on the much
more stable NT kernel which of course they eventually did with Windows XP key
in 2001 however Microsoft originally wanted an NT edition of Windows for home
users before the end of 2000 but due to how much development time was required
Windows me was released instead in June of that year it was the third major
Windows release in the 9x series and while it was designed to be easier for
home users it was somehow worse than its
predecessors due to how unstable it was but with Windows 9x already having a bad
reputation for stability how was it possible for Microsoft to allow Windows
me to be even more frustrating we'll tell you right after we thank jackery
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winning some great prize the biggest problem with Windows me was
probably that it didn't really know who it was although it was firmly part of
the Windows 9x family Microsoft tried to drag Windows Millennium Edition into the
New Millennium by stripping away some of the MS-DOS components older versions of
Windows relied on but not all of them the idea was to improve boot times but
many applications that relied on dos just stopped working even if you weren't
running any dos based programs though there was a very good chance you'd have
Hardware that would start acting up although Windows me had higher minimum
requirements than its predecessor Windows 98 they weren't that much higher
meaning that many users thought they wouldn't have too many issues installing me without upgrading their Hardware
unfortunately though enough had changed under the hood with Windows me including
a restructured registry to give thousands of users massive headaches
when their old Windows 95 and 98 drivers simply would not work with the new
operating system what was really infuriating is that Microsoft faced
similar issues when it is customer upgraded to Windows 98 from 95 yet again
they didn't adequately ensure enough driver support when me hit store shelves
complicating matters further was the fact that me attempted to handle two
different driver standards one from the Windows 95 era and one from the Windows
98 era and these drivers had a tendency
to conflict they don't like each other and while it was possible in some cases
for tech savvy users to find workarounds the problem was that Windows me was
specifically marketed as being Microsoft's first ever entirely home
oriented operating system meaning that it was supposed to be simple and
reliable for the average Joe or Jane at home and I'm pretty sure booting up and
having multiple pieces of hardware and software simply refused to work is the
opposite of simple now let's be fair Windows me wasn't all bad it introduced
some important features that have held on to this day including system restore
automatic Windows updates and generic drivers that enabled the OS to recognize
any USB flash drive as soon as you plugged it in but considering the fact
that Windows me was an overall nightmare for home users it wasn't a surprise that
Microsoft finally pulled the plug on the old Windows 9x ecosystem in 2001 and now
it's time for us to pull the plug on this video I've got NT kernels in the
microwave can't wait hey that's it for this video
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