Microsoft's Windows Me (Millennium Edition) raises the bar for consumers as a new and improved operating system with a handful of appealing features. While perhaps no single improvement on its own makes or breaks this upgrade, together they add up to a smoother and more productive computing experience for all. With faster boot times, better reliability, and great support for today's multimedia devices like video cameras and scanners, Windows Me provides a slicker, more powerful operating system ideal for almost any home user. You'll notice right off the bat that Windows Me should boot noticeably faster for you. The reason is that the underpinnings of DOS have been removed from this new release. One result of this absence is that you can no longer boot to a command window as in Windows 95/98 without special diskettes. (Also, don't expect Windows Me to support older hardware that uses virtual device drivers written in the days of yore.) Of course, you can still effortlessly run command sessions of DOS within Windows Me.
Besides removing legacy support for DOS, Windows Me adds several improvements to reliability. The most important is that every 10 hours or so, the operating system will automatically back up its system files (just like Windows 2000 does), thus reducing the chance of having your system get corrupted. Windows Me also borrows the TCP/IP stack--the low-level code that connects to the Internet--from Windows 2000, meaning you should have slightly faster and more reliable networking connections.
The personality of Windows Me also changed a bit, and we think for the better. Principally, you can take advantage of personalised menus, which will show the most frequently accessed menu choices on the Start bar and hide the others. But don't worry, you can turn it off if you want to. This feature is also based on Windows 2000. Numerous additional smaller touches will make your computing life easier. Internet Explorer 5.5 is bundled here. So is support for working with compressed ZIP files, which no longer require add-on software. Ideal for laptop users, the system can hibernate and save a computing session to disk so you can quickly resume your work later.
Microsoft has been touting the multimedia capabilities of the new Windows Me with good reason. There's a built-in video editor for video files, and the operating system makes it easier than ever to connect to today's video cams, scanners, and digital cameras. The operating system is ready to go for game players with the latest version of DirectX , Microsoft's gaming platform.
So what's the verdict on Windows Me? It's the little touches that users will appreciate. Provided you have recent hardware, there are plenty of good reasons to upgrade. While business users will probably want to stick to Windows 2000 as their OS of choice, Windows Me shows that Microsoft has done its homework when it comes to improving the computing experience for consumers. --Rich Dragan, amazon.com
