[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!