Product: Windows Millennium Edition
Company: Microsoft
Website: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsme
Estimated Street Price: Full Version: $209 - Upgrade Version: $109
Buy Windows Me Now - Low Price
Review By: Byron Hinson & Julien Jay

Installation And First Boot

First you have to know that Windows Me requires at least a Pentium 150 to run correctly. It is clear that this update is not intended to achieve high performance on slow PCs. All the power of Windows Me will be unleashed with Pentium II or better yet a Pentium III. Windows Me requires at least 32MB of RAM to run correctly but honestly you will have a better computing experience with at least 64MB or more of RAM, I'd recommend 128 minimum personally. Installing Windows Me on your computer is very easy: insert the CD and start an upgrade setup over a previous version of Windows. You can also choose to run the setup from DOS in order to make a clean install, that is always recommended to avoid possible conflicts, but many users won't want the hassle of formatting so we'll go with an upgrade.

A nice setup wizard makes your installation experience much easier than previous ones. You'll be prompted to type your CD-Key and to choose some settings like the components you want to install and more if you run a clean installation. For this review we have gone with an upgrade over an existing used machine (Not overly used by with various applications and games on). Next Windows Me runs scandisk and various other programs to check your PC is in working order for an upgrade. Once it's done you can choose to save existing system files in order to have the ability to uninstall Windows Me later. You will also have to choose if you want to create a boot floppy disk (which is a very good idea) now that Windows Me does away with the option of loading Dos at boot time.

Then the setup will take approximately 45 minutes to complete depending on your computer' speed. Windows Me setup stated that mine would take around 26 minutes but 40 was more correct. When the Windows Me setup has finished copying the required files it will detect your plug and play hardware: please note that if you're upgrading from Windows 98, all your previous drivers will normally work under Windows Me as they'll be kept by the setup. We regret that some hardware are not managed by Windows Me when making a clean install such as the Matrox G400 boards.

The First Start Up

The first thing that you will notice once you start up your newly installed Windows Me system is that there is no sign of Autoexec.bat or Config.sys files loading. The boot speed of our review machine went from around a minute to 45 seconds so the 15 second increase is quite nice but not quite as amazing as some newly installed OEM machines will be seeing (30 seconds we believe) either way a faster booting time is something most users will be pleased with.

The next thing you notice is the new background color that Windows Me uses on default. It is a darker shade of blue. Then comes a new start up sound which is nowhere near as annoying as the one used in Windows 95 and Windows 98 and might actually stick around on some PC's this time round.