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

Internet

Even with the antitrust case running, Windows Me includes Microsoft Internet Explorer that comes in its 5.5 release. This new release adds several backgrounds enhancements such as a revised HTML engine that should displayed web pages more quickly. The major new feature of IE 5.5 is certainly its print preview feature that at least allows users to get a print preview of the current web page they want to print. The print preview layout is accurate and will show users where the text will be truncated when they print long web pages. We also noticed that the RAS stack of Windows has been enhanced and the small connecting indicator icon that appears in the tray has changed.

New HTML features are mostly for the developers out there at the moment, there are additions such as zoom on graphics, enhanced CSS and the ability to change scroll bars via CSS (Which won't catch on in my view). The only strange this about this version of Internet Explorer 5.5 is that the build number is actually older than the one that will be released to the public, but in saying that - the Internet Explorer versions intergrated into an operating system do tend to have different build numbers to those released to the public to download.

The messaging software, Outlook Express, has also been improved and features a ‘read receipt’ feature ensuring users that their email messages were read. For the first time, Windows also includes the MSN Messenger Service 2.2 tool that enables users to see friends that are online and chat instantly with them by exchanging instant messages. However MSN Messenger still does not offer to share files between connected friends. NetMeeting 3.01SP1 is always included and is the unavoidable software to exchange video and voice in real time over the net. We noticed that one new feature of MSN Messenger is that you can invite a connected friend to start a NetMeeting session without worrying about those annoying ILS issues. All in all nothing major has been updated in terms of Internet Explorer, but I am not sure anything really needed to be apart from stability, and IE 5.5 certainly managed to do that.