Unbelieveable..!

About 20 minutes ago I was writing an e-mail attachment to a company I'm doing some work for, when the system HDD on the PC I'm currently using started making the tell-tale rapid pickup flyback noises that let you know the HDD is on its way out. Well OK, I thought... bloody inconvenient, but I have two other computers I could do the work on. Before you could say Western Digital, the HDD failed completely. Just to get the repair underway though, I put a spare HDD in place that had been on another old PC of mine I'd given away from a few months back. I was going to format the HDD, and start again. But just for the laugh I let it boot up to see how far it would get before it fell over. Well, it would wouldn't it, as Windows ME was the OS in place on the HDD and this computer has been setup for Windows XP and bang upto date.

Imagine the amazement..! This old and rather bad mouthed ME OS, not only booted up, but configured the internet connection, sound, almost everything, except the high res ATI display card I'm using. In fact, I'm typing this on the very PC. I might even keep Windows ME on here for a short time just for a laugh.

I never thought I'd say this about Windows ME, but hats off to it. Just need to find a display driver for it.

Found an old ATI ME driver and it works very well. Blimey, this OS is screaming along. Much faster than anything I've used in years. Must be indulging in all the RAM room it's finding. It's as if I've just spent several hundred quid on a new PC. What a laugh.

Found an old ATI ME driver and it works very well. Blimey, this OS is screaming along. Much faster than anything I've used in years. Must be indulging in all the RAM room it's finding. It's as if I've just spent several hundred quid on a new PC. What a laugh.

I've oft wondered what it would be like (speedwise) using a (relatively) new machine with an old OS.

I've oft wondered what it would be like (speedwise) using a (relatively) new machine with an old OS.

Well now you know. Old OS'es can be fast and reliable. Never thought I'd say that about Windows ME though.

I would sooner nail my kn*b to a burning building than use ME again!

Still interesting though

Anyone still using 3.11 then?

Anyone still using 3.11 then?

Give me DOS 5 any day

Or better still something with a penguin badge on it.

Anyone still using 3.11 then?

Had a go a few years back [about 2004]. It was running around in 256mb of SDRAM. I think its absolute limit is 512mb, but I can't quite remember why. Anyway, it is probably the fastest I've ever seen an edition of Windows of any description run. The real trick was to see how many things it could do compared to Windows XP. Vista wasn't on the market at that point. It was quite surprising what 3.11 was capable of. If we all used it, we'd all have to be nerdy types to do anything new, but Microsoft would be a lot poorer as a result. It's perfectly capable of doing 70-80% of today's OS capablities. What you don't get are the bells and whistles. But just imagine what it could have done if the code had been in the open community, like Linux. Getting online took the biggest amount of time, if I remember correctly. That was a bit of a strain on my memory.

Was it ever quick though, and super stable.

Give me DOS 5 any day

 

Or better still something with a penguin badge on it.

Whatever floats your boat...:confused:

Whatever floats your boat...:confused:

 

Doesn't look much like Mr Torvalds

good old Tux

Back on XP now, but due to the fact that I'm getting a bit piddled off at the clunkiness of IE7, I've decided to go on Safari again. I have to admit that every time I use it, it is a pleasant change.

The HDD with ME on it is still about every time I want a change of pace, back into the fast lane, so to speak.

After getting my new desktop recently, I tried to set my old one up with Win98SE to see how well it would run. I managed to track down most of the drivers, but it was just too unstable. I gave up when I started to remember how irritating the blue screen of death really is!

I might try and dig out a copy of ME though to see how that copes, might just save the thing from an early trip to the charity shop.