As a gamer, I had to give up a lot of software to use XP full time. I did end up running a dual boot system for a while, but I eventually just decided to let the old software go...
I set up a dual-boot PC for a friend, 98 for gaming and XP for productivity. 98 was stripped down with 98Lite and XP was trimmed a little with XPLite plus the pagefile and a few services disabled. Never had any calls requesting support. The PC was stolen a few years later but my friend still remembers it fondly.
I'll just go on record saying that ME wasn't as bad as people remember it. That does not mean it was great, but as someone else already said, Win98 Third Edition / service pack would have been a better idea.
The biggest problem with ME was trying to be all things to all people. Trying to allow legacy drivers to still work in a new driver model I think was their biggest mistake. That led to more instability than anything. The problem was largely legacy drivers that didn't do things right, and their decision to allow it.
Still, I'm sure they made money on ME. Maybe not much or any from business or upgrades, but a lot of computers wound up being sold that year with an ME license attached. It did what they wanted by keeping the cash flowing until they could get XP out the door.
XP was codenamed 'Whistler' though, Longhorn was for Vista, eventually at least.
Did I write something about this? I don't understand the quote and response in context.
My bad, accidentally quoted you.
On 1/6/2022 at 12:31 AM, kelli217 said:
ME was released when they thought that the big plans they had for XP (then 'Longhorn') would take too long to bring to market, and they needed a stopgap version. But then XP came out the very next year after they scrapped a lot of their more ambitious ideas.
Then they proceeded to sell XP for six years while working on Vista.
So I would never have made ME in the first place.
Was supposed to be for him. As I reiterate, XP was codenamed 'Whistler', Longhorn was for Vista, eventually at least.
Sorry, oops. I seem to recall having read somewhere that the XP release was originally supposed to have been based on the Longhorn project and got scaled back to being a bunch of interface changes to Windows 2000, thus XP was 5.1 to W2K's 5.0. But my recollection is probably quite muddled at this point, 21 years or so down the road.
Sorry, oops. I seem to recall having read somewhere that the XP release was originally supposed to have been based on the Longhorn project and got scaled back to being a bunch of interface changes to Windows 2000, thus XP was 5.1 to W2K's 5.0. But my recollection is probably quite muddled at this point, 21 years or so down the road.
It's fine. Beta-testing Windows OSes ain't exactly easy anyways.
What if Bill Gates put you and your development team at Microsoft at charge of Windows ME's development?
Would you make sure not to rush Windows ME's development and keep adding new features that would lay the foundation of NT-based Windows XP?
Or just give up with ME and keep developing NT-based Neptune by merging 9X and NT kernels, eventuality making an operating system very similar to XP?
I would go back in time and make sure Windows 98 never had that IE integration shoehorned into it and just make it a better Windows 95, I would also cancel IE 4's Active Desktop add-on for Windows 95. THEN I would make what would be Windows ME into a Windows 98 Second/Third edition, depending on whatever or not the normal universe's Windows 98 SE ever happens or not, and NOT remove MS-DOS mode unless an option was ticked for fast startup. Windows Movie Maker would be released for both Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0/2000 as a free download, and have multiple audio/video layers in an advanced mode. Once Windows XP would enter development, I would scrap the Luna theme and have the team focus on polishing the Watercolor theme alongside scrapping various other XP misfeatures such as Activation and the annoying yellow dog search thing. Once XP/Whistler comes out, it'll be called Windows 2002 and only have one edition for both businesses and home users. I could go on about this alternate timeline, but that should be enough.
