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Windows ME

Millenium Edition

summary

    Windows ME is a package of the updates to Windows 98 along with a few poorly designed application programs intended to unfairly use Microsoft’s monopoly position to knock off better products made by other companies. Microsoft had originally announced that Windows 2000 was going to combine Windows NT and Windows 98, but after years of trying, Microsoft’s engineers were unable to deliver on this marketing promise. Instead, Windows 2000 was released as an update to Windows NT (with a rename to cover up all the bad publicity for the unreliability and lack of security in Windows NT). This left a hole in the promised update of the consumer version of Windows, so Microsoft repackaged its Windows 98 upgrades ad called it Windows ME, pretending that they had released something new.

• further reading: books on Windows ME
• What are the alternatives to Windows?

Kind of OS: proprietary

Current Version:

Hardware Supported: Intel/Cyrix/AMD Pentium

Maximum Number of Processors: 1

Number of bits:

Memory map:

Kernel: proprietary

POSIX: not supported

Peripherals:

Other Systems Emulated:

Graphics Engine:

Text Command Shell: DOS command line

User Interface (graphic):

Graphic Command Shell: Explorer^e80

Other:

    “Windows machines have advantages, too, such as more configuration options, cheaper up front cost, availability of software, snappier response on window controls, cheaper components, more peripherals.” —Why Monopolies Are Bad, by Jeff Adkins^w77

references

further reading: books: administration

    Universal Command Guide; by Guy Lotgering (UCG Team); Hungry Minds, Inc; April 2002; ISBN 0764548336; hardcover with CD-ROM; 1,600 pages; $69.99; cross references all of the commands from: AIX; Solaris; RedHat Linux; Berkeley BSD; NetWare 3.2, 4.11, 5, and 6; DOS 6.22; Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, NT 4 Workstation, NT 4 Server, NT 4 Terminal Server, 2000 Professional, 2000 Server, 2000 Advanced Server; Citrix Mainframe 1.8; and Mac 9

alternatives to Windows

opinion

1.1 MB QuickTime movie of Bill Gates explaining his criteria for selecting the best operating system.

    “Microsoft enjoyed its great success not because it had great software but because people were stuck with it. Market domination, not innovation, drove the company’s success,” wrote James Wallace in the book “Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace”, John Wiley &#amp; Sons, September 1997.

    Commentary: Quite simply, Windows guarantees more work for the M.I.S. departments — because it computers require far more technical support to do the same work. And when the M.I.S. departments make computer recommendations to management, they tend to look out for their own job security over the best interests of the business. The same reason that many retail stores also push Wintel machines — it guarantees more work for their highly profitable service departments.

    Study after study has shown that Macintoshes are less expensive to support and maintain than Wintel machines. Wintel computers typically cost four to 10 times as much in support costs. Even Intel’s own internal study showed that it was costing them four times as much to support Windows machines as it did to support their Macintoshes (yes, Intel used Macintoshes for mission critical work — and since that study they have been expanding their use of Macintoshes).

    Independent studies over the years continually show that worker productivity is substantially higher on Macintoshes than on Wintel computers. And the difference is greatest in the creative fields (pre-press, illustration, digital photography, 2-D and 3-D animation, 3-D modelling and rendering, film special effects, broadcast video editting, CD-ROM production, multi-media, music composition and performance, sound editting, and web site production), where the Macintosh is the most prevalent computer (even more than the high end graphics work stations — and Macintosh OS X (formerly Rhapsody) brings the Macintosh to the high end graphics work stations). Macintosh OS X is numerically the most used form of UNIX, bringing the flexibility, reliability, power, and speed of NeXT’s object oriented frameworks together with some of the ease of use, user interface, and consumer software of the Macintosh.

    Macintosh OS X (formerly Rhapsody) (which combines the ease of use and professional content creation capabilities of the Macintosh with the power, reliability, and speed of NeXT version of UNIX) will be available for PowerPC machines in 2001. BeOS and OS/2 also offer excellent desktop alternatives to the Windows family of operating systems. Any of the many free and commercial versions of UNIX offer a better high end operating system than Windows NT. See John Kirch’s article “Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX” at http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/.

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    †UNIX used as a generic term unless specifically used as a trademark (such as in the phrase “UNIX certified”). UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Ltd.

    Copyright © 2002 Milo

    Last Updated: April 19, 2002

    Created: January 14, 2002

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