Windows 98 was an evolutionary, not revolutionary, upgrade from Windows 95. It had a lot of great incremental improvements, though! Scanreg (the Registry Checker) saved my bacon a number of times, and MSConfig and Disk Cleanup are still in heavy use to this day. Having IE 4 integrated was a plus, though I was already familiar with the new interface largely due to the Windows Desktop Update that came with IE 4 as an option on Win95. I used 98 for a long time and figured out a lot of great ways to mod it up.

While Windows 98 is still fairly widely used (especially in third-world countries), the same can’t be said about Windows Me, generally considered the worst modern release of Windows known to man. They should have put it down sooner, probably, but they at least wanted to be fair. I’ll always remember being astonished at Windows Me being delivered with beta versions of Media Player 7* and IE 5.5, which were finalized on Me’s release day and made available on Windows Update for immediate download. It was lame during its development, and only saw about a year of mainstream use before it was obsoleted by Windows XP. I remember using Windows Me briefly at my parents’ house back in 2001 and being absolutely stunned at its lack of compatibility with a lot of applications, despite it being a legacy operating system (indeed, the main draw to Windows Me was that it was an alternative to Windows 2000 that supported more hardware and software…right). Needless to say, I was so, so happy to bring Windows XP and its NT kernel home. Since I upgraded to XP at home, I’ve seen Windows Me in the field on exactly two computers. It had no staying power – but then again, was that Microsoft’s intent? I would expound further, but I’m worn out and my stomach (and probably you! :P) are screaming at me. :)

* Thanks beanboy89!

J