[jazzy millennium music] Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing about Windows Millennium Edition. Yes, it is time to dive into this and uhh... and see if it really was 'better living in the digital world.' You know, this is a
fascinating product really, and despite my own mixed
personal experiences with it, just looking back at this
thing's release, its reception and its 20 years of people deriding it. I mean, it's just become one
of the most often maligned and highly criticized
Microsoft operating systems and tech products of all time. Whether that's completely deserved or not, let's hopefully figure some
of that out in this video. But yeah, either way,
Millennium Edition has appeared on so many different lists of
the worst tech products ever and things like that over the years. And it's become the subject
of memes, the butt of jokes and is often called something
like Mistake Edition or Major Embarrassment or
Multiple Enemas or whatever people wanna say that
Me actually stands for. The ongoing narrative being
that it was so bad that it led people to move on to Windows 2000 or, just downgrade to a Windows 98SE or not even bother changing
anything with their OS at all, especially since
Windows XP was just around the corner in October of 2001. This came out in well, it
was released to manufacturing in June 19th of 2000 and
actually hit store shelves September 14th, 2000 meaning
that it remained current for a little over a
year and that was that. Now as for my own personal
thoughts as to whether or not this was really
as bad as everyone says. Well, to be honest, at the
point I'm recording this at this very moment, I haven't used it in at least 18 years I had it
on my Compaq Presario 5000US it came pre-installed on there. I used it for a year, maybe two I believe and it just got so unstable
at that point that I did actually downgrade to
Windows 98 Second Edition and that worked a lot better,
at least in my recollection. I don't actually know of the specifics of what was causing the instability. Either way I was not a fan of it back then and I've always had lingering
feelings about Me ever since. And yes, it is officially
pronounced 'Me' just the way it's spelled there. You'll often hear it said 'M.E.'
and as far as I'm concerned that's legitimate as well. But if you look at old
articles and the press and such, you've got
journalists and Microsoft reps were repeatedly making the point back then that it was meant to be
said 'Me' for better or worse, and the marketing reflected this. There were lots of 'Meet Me'
ads and 'Me is the operating system for Me' and things like that. It's still an initialism
standing for Millennium Edition of course, but the PR really wanted to try and differentiate it from Windows 2000 because that was another
beast entirely sold at the same time. And it was really meant for
business and enterprise users, a proper successor to Windows NT 4.0 whereas Millennium Edition
was meant to be the next big mainstream consumer operating system. And originally it was
actually gonna be based on the NT kernel and file
system like Windows 2000 was, but for many multiple reasons it ended up being the final
Windows built on top of MS-DOS and there are several
videos going more in depth as to why this happened and the details of the development of it. In fact, there's one by Science
Elf I watched not too long ago, I recommend that. But
right now I'm more interested in seeing whether or not
it really was the best in digital media and
improved user experience, enhanced whole networking and
a rich internet experience compared to Windows 98SE. Plus I have this big box
version here of the full complete edition of Windows Millennium. Something I didn't get
until recently because this has oddly enough,
become somewhat hard to find, especially sealed and in
complete in box like this. I've never opened up one of these, I never had it myself back in the day. Like I said, it came with my
Compaq and as far as I can tell that's the way most people
got Millennium Edition and was actually just
a pre-installed thing. Otherwise, there were
three different versions available at retail. A $60 limited edition for
upgrading Windows 98SE, a $110 upgrade edition for Windows 95 and 98 first edition users,
and the $210 full version complete in the box with all the goodies as we have right here. And this is also one that if
you bought it from CompUSA, then you'd get a limited
edition Windows Me watch with the purchase of one
of the first 25,000 units sold at those stores. Well, I don't have one
of those watches here, but I do have the original
packaging, so yeah, let's just open it up and
see what is packed inside. I mean, I'm pretty sure we all know it's gonna be operating system stuff. Microsoft didn't exactly go crazy with their boxed OS contents. Still though, I'm curious
what is contained. There goes the seal, all right. [Box unboxes boxily] Imagine paying $210 in the year 2000 and this is what you get, man. Look at that. You get that hologram disc. The way this is worded amuses me. The product ships with an
advanced hologram technology. I just imagined like Tupac
popping out of the box. Yeah, oh man, I have never
seen a Windows Millennium Edition disc in person and
honestly that looks fantastic. [laughing] I'm legitimately impressed,
that looks so much cooler than any other version of Windows I have. Honestly, that's legit. A product's key on the back there and not a whole lot
else inside as expected. You got a nice little Windows
Millennium Edition boot disk. It's always cool they include
this for a couple of reasons actually for this version of Windows. And we've got a slip for
America Online Gold version 5.0. Try it for 500 hours free. Indeed, yeah. The fact that you'd pay $210 and then still get advertised AOL... Anyway, Microsoft! And we
got the quick start guide. It's a bummer that it doesn't come with any kind of actual
manual or full documentation or anything, but you know what? That's just what they
were doing at this point. One of the things they were pushing though was the interactive help system. It was supposedly much more improved. I mean it was improved over
what came with like Windows 95 and 98 but yeah, this really it's just a quick startup guide. So
[laughing] basically telling you the basics and that's that, man, rant over. I just don't like quick start guides and prefer actual manuals. But anyway, this is all
you get inside here. Let's get this delightful-looking
CD installed on the LGR Megaluminum Monster, which is
currently a Windows 98SE PC but I guess now it's gonna
have Millennium Edition on it and at least for today. [Saxophone fades out softly] All right, got the LGR Megaluminum Monster here ready to go and next time we see it it will be booted into Windows Me. Let's get this CD in here. [Disc startup sound plays] The CD-ROM contains a
newer version of Windows Millennium presently using. Would you like to upgrade it? Yes! I mean we don't have to do it from here. We could just reboot and do things like that, but yeah, why not? I'm gonna try the, oh there's music. Sort of.
[chuckles] Yeah I'm just gonna
try the upgrade version of this first. Just taking 98SE and upgrading
to Millennium Edition. See how that goes. I've read mixed results may
occur so that could be fun and if it's a complete disaster
we will try a clean install, but upgrade is first. Welcome to Windows Me set up. Congratulations on choosing
Windows Millennium Edition. I'm not sure if I chose
it or if you guys chose it by requesting it for years but anyway, [snarky typing] There we go. Now checking my hard disk for problems. There is no hard disk. This is running off of SD cards. There's a SCSI2SD installed in here, which is nice because
I don't plan on keeping this running Millennium Edition after this, so I can just swap
back to a Windows 98 SD card. I've got them cloned and everything, so I actually just swap
them out all the time. But anyway, behind the scenes stuff. Windows just got better. It helps you get the
most out of your computer by providing the best in
digital media and improve user experience enhanced
networking and rich internet. It's they were hyping those four aspects in particular constantly
and all the marketing that I've been looking up here recently. It's fascinating though because
a lot of those enhancements were actually available on
Windows 98SE without the need for Millennium Edition even though, I mean you know they're
advertised right here in the back of showing like Windows
Media Player 7 for instance and talking about Internet Explorer 5.5 both of those were
available as free updates, free downloads from
Microsoft online for 98SE. You didn't need Me for that and that led to a lot of people, again
just looking at like old user reviews and journalists
and stuff to believe that you really didn't
need upgrade to this. It wasn't worth upgrading
because the most attractive features like Media Player 7 and IE 5.5 and MSN Messenger was a big exciting thing that Me came with. Those are all available in
98 so why would you upgrade? Well, but you know you had
other things that this came with that weren't
available on 98SE at least not that I know of. Like Windows Movie Maker. That was a big deal, man. I know I loved messing around with that. In fact, I believe Movie
Maker was my very first video editor of any kind. Oh it's restarted. There's a more familiar
looking Windows setup, setup. At least visually. Alrighty I believe that was it. So we'll see if it works. First boot here about half an hour later. Oh that splash screen. I feel like I need a crucifix. [Windows Me startup tune plays] Now there's a startup I haven't
heard in a very long time. Wow, it seems like everything is working. I was expecting at least
one thing to maybe need to be installed or whatever, but nah man, it's just straight up working. I do have like the latest
drivers for my Aureal Vortex sound card and the Voodoo3 graphics card. I was wondering 'cause I
have two sound cards in there and AWE64 gold and the Vortex 2. I have the game port disabled in that one and it's enabled on AWE64
and it kept that too. Like everything is in
here working perfectly. It looks like so far I'll be honest, that is a bit of a surprise. I was expecting at least one
or two drivers not to be okay, but, and we've got some extra things. So we've got the new Media Player 7 here. Ooh, how exciting. Oh man, haven't seen that in forever. [chuckles]
[Beck begins playing] Oh, got to stop that 'cuz copyright, I forgot that it played Beck. Look at all this
[laughing] like the skins and crazy stuff just extraneously popping out everywhere. I need a higher resolution. Huh, I can't. Well why not? Okay, so there we go. I made the monitor the
VX700 by Gateway here. So now you can actually change
that to 800x600, good stuff. So now we can get all the full nonsense of Media Player 7 here. It's bringing back so many
weird memories immediately. All these terrible skins
and such, oh, headspace. There's a classic of like, yeah, new millennium kind of
aesthetic, what in the world? All these terrible designs. The eyeballs, oh man, look at this. Just look what in the world
the whole design language at the time period. UI/UX was just a nightmare. But it's kind of oddly appealing in a retro futurism kind of
way. We got Windows Update. Ah yes, this was a new thing
and just have it connect the straight to here, you know and it would download things
every day if you wanted it to and keep your Windows updated and instead of having to go to a website and download individual files or whatever, which is probably what I
will do if I end up updating this 'cuz I am not gonna
connect to the internet, just copy files over and
I'll see desktop themes. This is also something that
came with a lot of them from like Plus!, which I think I had installed on here already. So I don't even know which ones were new but yeah, all these like classic themes. Man I loved "Inside Your
Computer," I mean, who didn't? Yeah, all those sounds
[laughing] And yeah, like I said these
were on 98 as well, so. But it came with a bunch of them. And this one is the, I guess.
Oof. What in the world. Too many sounds, just nonsense. Yeah, scanners and cameras. This was a new thing as well 'cause you could just like
add devices right here. I remember that being much
more convenient than 98SE. There was also some things in the task bar and like just regular menus. Yeah, like a lot more
customization options as well as like, yeah, this 'personalized menus.' I've never liked this. You could have it just --
well that's not gonna do it cuz it's a fresh
install, but -- only pop up the individual things
that you use the most in the Start Menu. I don't
like that, never have. There was also like, auto complete. Yeah so that was a thing. It was like, oh man, you
don't have to like necessarily remember exactly what's
on your hard drive. You can just auto complete things. Whoa you've got Duke 3D in here somewhere? There it is! That was exciting at the time! Also came with some new games
which I always appreciated. So you have the internet
games, so internet backgammon and checkers, hearts, reversi, spades. Those were all new in Millennium Edition. Of course you got to be online and play through the MSN Gaming Zone thing. Spider Solitaire was also new,
timeless classic right there. [laughing] or so it became, right? I don't remember how to play this. And you got Classic Solitaire. It's now called just
just Classic Solitaire to differentiate it.
And then of course... [pinball hype] you can't knock it for having
3D Pinball Space Cadet. Again, this is included
in some of the versions of plus before this and
of course it was included in XP later on, but you
got to give any props for including a classic for the first time by default in Windows. Wow, that was afwul. Ah, Windows Millennium Edition Preview. We'll see you when is this? Ooh shockwave, it's just a video, yup. [upbeat music]
[laughing] I had those exact
speakers... The year 2000. I've got a couple of those cameras too. Recover from problems easily. If a kid is smashing the
computer with a hammer. Oh that Billy, ruining computers. Yeah, system restore. I never used this on Windows Me, ever. It doesn't even have any restore points because we just installed it, but still, I don't think I started
using this until XP. So let's just create a point. When I was reading, some folks
weren't necessarily a fan of it at the time because not
only did it seem to bug out, but it took up a good
chunk of hard disk space, like 150, 200 megs or
something per restore point. And running things in the background and slowing down the computer. So you ended up getting slower
performance than Windows 98 but never go created a restore point. Check out that new Help
and Support System. Yeah, this was pretty advanced man compared to what Windows 98 had. It's like a full on Encarta
encyclopedia kind of design. Very HTML-centric. I'm sure some folks took advantage of it, especially since this
didn't come with a manual. Dang it. Ah, here we go. Windows Movie Maker. Look at that. Whoa. [upbeat music] Okay, music for every... yup. [upbeat music] Do we have anything to import? There's a sample file, so that's good. Oh, look at these. It automatically made those clips. [laughing] Oh, that was the best quality. Ooh. Okay, so we can edit this
together and let's put that right here and then we'll do a Beck bitmap. Put that right here in port I guess we can just do wave files. Yeah, we'll add some,
add some sound effects. [laughing] Gonna be the best video. I don't believe this one
actually lets you put like static text boxes or anything
like that in this one, I may be wrong, I dunno, but
I'm not seeing that anyway. [upbeat music] [laughing] [upbeat music] Oh, I'm gonna save that movie. Highest quality, which is what? 256 kbps, 396K file size. Saving it as a Windows Media Video file. Look at that encoder go. Ah, magnificent. Yes, watch it now. [Utopia WAV files play, repeatedly] An editing masterpiece. Yeah on retrospect, I
definitely use the Media or, Movie Maker in XP
much more often than this. This is 1.0.13760, ooh. And of course one of the
biggest changes is the fact that there is no longer MS-DOS mode. I mean it's here, this is
still built on top of DOS, but they straight up hid it
and you'd have to re-enable it through ways, it wasn't
actually long at all before some folks online and journalists and whatnot were sharing
methods of restoring the MS-DOS functionality or
you know, making it easier to access because it's still here. I mean, you've got to MS-DOS
prompt so you could like run things that don't require
real mode for instance. But like, I mean that was
pretty much it because it took away the real mode stuff. So it definitely broke certain games, [Jazz Jackrabbit theme plays] but others worked perfectly fine. Yeah, Jazz JackRabbit, it works. Then you have games like Epic Pinball that aren't ideal running under Windows. You get some like weird
choppiness with the scrolling. [Android table music plays] Yeah, I never liked that. So yeah, if you could run
that under like DOS mode, then that'd be great. Normally you'd just be able to go in here and create like a PIF or whatever and you just tell it to go in
DOS mode but it's straight up not even an option anymore. Duke 3D though, I mean
you know, that works. So it's all you need. [Grabbag plays] - [Duke] Let's rock. Die. I'm killing you with
Windows Millennium Edition. It's pretty deadly. Still, despite a lot of
my favorites working fine, there's a number of games and programs that just won't work properly
or at all without DOS running in real mode. Not a problem in older versions of Windows where you can just restart
an MS-DOS mode at any time. No such luck in Me though. So as for getting that to work, there are a few well
known methods I tried out. First is writing a boot disk or just using the one
Millennium Edition came with which you'll boot into a menu letting you select Windows
or DOS mode either with or without CD-ROM support. Same as you could on
Windows 95 and 98 and such. This is definitely the easiest
way to access DOS mode in Me, MS-DOS 8.0 in this case. Now you won't have Sound Blaster or mouse support yet, but I
imagine amending the disk's autoexec and running the
needed TSRs is an option. Next up I tried Manifest
Destiny's Real Mode DOS Patch version 1.3, something
hosted all over the web back in the day and even
got a write up in Info World Magazine in October of 2000. It's a simple patcher program
where you copy three different Windows system files into
one folder, run the program and it'll modify things so you're ready to overwrite the originals. Add a couple lines to
config.sys and autoexec.bat and that's that. Basically this tricks
Windows Me into thinking it's always running a
boot desk no matter what, which is somewhat annoying
personally but it does work. The last one I tried is
DOS Fix Me version 3.0 from Overclockers Australia,
supposedly the last and best version from them. In contrast to the manual
nature of the other methods this one presents you with
a comparatively nice menu system, letting you
apply and undo the patch as well as disabled,
potentially unwanted features like PC Health and System Restore. Unfortunately, it didn't
seem to work for me at all. Completely messing up a
whole load of system files to the point where the undo
didn't work and the system became unbootable. Whatever man. Even if it did work, it
still wouldn't restore features like being able to
tell DOS program information files to boot a program in real DOS mode, or enable restarting in MS-DOS
mode from the start menu, each of which I use all the
dang time on Windows 98SE. So yeah, even with the patches
and workarounds, Windows Me simply isn't the
operating system of choice if you need a proper DOS. Again, the majority of games
I've tried work just fine under a Windows DOS prompt
at least as well as they do under Windows 98 better
than I remember honestly, but it's just not ideal
if you have the choice. What about the Windows side of gaming? After all Windows Me is a flavor of 9x, so anything designed for
95 and 98 should work just as well, right? Well maybe. Something I
ran across in my research is that Millennium Edition is
consistently slower than 98SE even using the exact same hardware and drivers when running
certain games and benchmarks. So I figured I'd run a few myself. Starting with the lovely Unreal Tournament from Epic Megagames. I've just got this running a time demo on the intro sequence at
800x600 resolution, vsync disabled, and 16-bit color, since this is running a 16 megabyte Voodoo3 graphics card. Same drivers and same direct X7, same
everything between me and 98. And at first glance they
look pretty darn similar. But the final numbers reveal
that 98SE ran the games slightly faster at 69.49
frames per second average, whereas Me pulled off
68.75. Not enough to make a visual difference, but there it is. Quake III Arena provided similar testing with the time demo playing a match I recorded to provide some
hard numbers for us to peruse. Still running at 16-bit
800x600 resolution by the way, and yeah, once again 98SE came out on top by a narrow margin. 71.3 FPS average on 98, 68.8
FPS on Millennium Edition. Intriguing. Next I decided
to try Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed since
along with UT and Q3 it was one of the top
games I played on my Compaq running Me back then.
It doesn't have a built in time demo or benchmark,
so I just recorded a race replay and ran Fraps on each OS and yeah. Without any totals or averages at the end it's just a frame rate
counter in the top left it's tough to say which is better though I'd wager Windows
98 wins by a tiny amount if the other examples or any indication. Either way, it's not enough
difference to matter. Finally, I had to try 3D
Mark 2000 since it runs a whole string of tests of varying types and gives a nice overall score at the end. Okay, and yeah, no surprise
here that the final results were crazy close, just
like all the others, 4,229 3D marks on 98SE
versus 4,226 on Windows Me within the margin of error
as far as I'm concerned. So yeah, in terms of Direct 3D, Open GL and Glide mode gaming, I
can't say it's worth choosing one OS over the other. There are no doubt outliers
that will work on 98 and not Me, and perhaps vice versa. But I haven't come across any
on this particular setup yet. And I think that's worth
noting one more time as we wrap up here. I've
built this PC piece by piece over the years to be as
awesome as possible at running the exact games I want in
the exact way that I want. This is all solid hardware
with excellent vendor support and I already had well-made
drivers and software set up and ready to go on 98SE
when Millennium Edition took the reigns here. So I have really given it
the best possible chance to succeed and I think
that may be one reason it's working so well. Considering the weird point
in time that Me came out in regards to things like low
quality sound and graphics hardware wonky 56K
modems, terrible printer and scanner software, crappily made games, spinning hard disks, ill-advised airflow and
cooling, mismatched drivers. Of course, the whole wild
west of internet garbage being downloaded on a regular basis. Yeah when you take all
that into consideration, it's no wonder that I
had a worse time back in the day, along with thousands of other users of Windows Me. Run enough garbage on
any older Windows system and it's gonna slow to a crawl and die an unstable blue screeny death. But give it a quality set of components and carefully-selected
drivers and software and Millennium Edition is fine. It's fine, just fine. Nothing amazing of course, but not nearly as god-awful
as its reputation implies. As is often said, it really is like
Windows 98 Third Edition. It's the same exact overall
experience that runs the exact same stuff with a
slew of little tweaks, updates, and add-ons that may or may
not be necessary depending on your needs. In my case, they absolutely aren't needed since I'll take my few
additional frames per second and a bit less in terms
of Microsoft bloat, thank you very much. And the
lack of an easily accessible MS-DOS mode alone is a
personal deal-breaker. What an annoyingly
arbitrary limitation, man. Yeah, I know Microsoft
did it in order to try and speed up boot times and
minimize device conflicts and yeah, it is quicker to start up and I haven't had any blue
screens of death so far. But the trade off isn't really worth it, at least not on this machine. That being said, I think
I'll install it on another PC instead, something I don't
use as much for LGR things. Because I don't know, why not? It's weirdly enjoyable to go back and mess around with Millennium Edition, I admit. Not something I ever
thought I'd say, but yeah. I absolutely understand
the jaded feelings. I've been there. But also
don't think all the hate is *entirely* warranted either. That's not to say I recommend it though, or even have much love for it. Windows 98SE is still the
better choice for PC gaming from around 1994 to 2001, and just go with Windows XP after that. But it's also not the end of the world, at least when set up on
a clean, reliable system. Heck, I'd say Windows Me
is actually kind of fun in that goofy turn of the
Millennium kind of way. And that's worth at
least a little something. [jazzy outro beats] And if you enjoyed this LGR video, then I'm sure you'd probably
dig some of the others that I've made covering old hardware and software and environments
like Microsoft Bob and whatever else, I do
videos like this every week. And as always, thank you
very much for watching!
I had a daily driver ME system for about 2+ years. If you didn't have driver issues it was absolutely fine. So, for a system made with mainstream components that you got updated drivers for I never really had issues.
I still have an ME Pentium II/Voodoo III system in my collection and play tons of early 3D accelerated racing games on that rig and it is solid. Not a bad OS for a retro machine really.
Now, XP was way better, and much more secure so I certainly didn't miss the glory days of ME once I got a new machine.
I'm one of the unlucky ones, I guess. My first 1GHz computer was a Medion computer with Windows ME.
It had a DVD-Rom and a CD-Writer, which allowed me to copy CD's on-the-fly. During one of my Nero-burning-rom sessions, Windows ME crashed, the DVD-Rom drive kept spinning at great speeds which caused the CD inside to explode :/
Weirdly enough the drive still worked afterwards, even though the front cover was blown off and I always had to open the tray manually.
I never copied a CD on-the-fly again.
I used it for about 3 years on the same Compaq /u/raiderofawesome showed a still image of, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't the best but it worked. I'm still using the JBL speakers that came with that computer too, used them to listen to the video in fact.
I always liked ME...mostly because of the startup chime.
Oh man that DOS fix section really brought me back to when I was around 12. I tried to use that program (or some variant) and also completely hosed up my install. It took my computer out of commission for months until I could bring it back to my dad in another state.
I was doing help desk at the time and it was generally awful. All day it was hearing, "It crashed again."
Going from Win95 to WinNT/2K, ME felt like such a step back.
I was on the beta test team for Me and ran it for a while after it came out. Eventually switched back to running Windows 2000 though, which was just so rock solid stable!
I remember thinking 98SE was better. The lack of being allowed into DOS on a machine that was running DOS was infuriating. There was a period where I ran 98lite on ME and ME with Windows 95's explorer was fast as hell. Faster than 98SE for some reason.
I ran ME few a few years and had zero problems (that I remember.) My PC at the time ran much better and booted much faster with ME.