Which Windows is Better: 98 or ME?

[Guest]

hello all!

Ok heres the situation..
Im building a new system- AMD 1200 ASUS a7a 266 DDR and an ATi Radeon 64. The only thing I havent decided on is which OS to use- 98 SE or Windows ME. Im a converted mac user, and I dont really know which one would be better due to lack of experience with both OS's. I want whichever OS would be more stable with the greatest possible hardware compatibility. Any opinions would be appreciated.
Also, I just purchased a globalwin FOP 32-1 heatsink/fan combo. It came with a piece of that bubble gummish stuff on the bottom- but I bought a tube of arctic silver 2 thermal grease. I wanted to know whether I should remove the heat transfer material, use both, or just forget the arctic silver altogether and install it as-is.


Thanks In advance-

Pier Posthumus

 

[Shocwavez]

I'd go with ME. Better hardware compatibility. A lot of ppl here will say 98 is more stable, but I've had better stability with ME. 98 is a tad faster at running apps but no big deal. As for the HSF, scrape that bubble gum stuff off and use the artic silver. I have the globalwin WBK38 w/artic silverII and it keeps my Tbird nice and cool .

:tongue: <font color=green> I LOVE INTEL. It tastes like chicken </font color=green>

 

[ejsmith2]

Try out ME, and if you're having it lockup/no drivers/gfx glitches, swap out to win98. You can dual boot win98 and winme if you want, or even win98/winme/linux.

 

[jerry557]

I couldn't decide either so I did a Tri-boot...

1. Windows ME
2. Windows 2000 Pro
3. Linux

 

[ejsmith2]

Did you run that through lilo?

 

[jerry557]

Not really, it is really a pretty interesting boot setup...I installed ME first since it loves to be first. Then Windows 2000 on its own partition and set it to dual boot with ME. I then set up Linux and installed LILO in the root directory of the Linux partition. And put Bootmagic on the C: drive with ME.

So when I start the computer I get two choices; Windows or Linux. If I chose Windows the 2nd screen asks which one; ME or 2000. If I chose Linux; LILO comes up and either chose to load kernel version 2.2.18 or 2.4.

Accually it was real easy to set up. And it doesn't take long for any of the OS's to boot. ME takes the longest at 40 secs. But Linux will load in less than 25. I really didn't need bootmagic because I can access the 2000 partition through LILO but I thought this made it more organized and more simple if something happened to one of the OS's, it won't bring the others down with it.

 

[Pettytheft]

ME takes the longest to boot??!!

WinME is the fastest booting OS around. There Must be something wrong with your installation if WinME is taking the longest boot time.

I run a similar setup.

WinME
Win2k
Mandrake Linux (I use Grub for my bootloader)

Win ME is by far the fastest booting OS. I'd say Win2k edges out Linux, but not by much. Unless you have a very small installation of Linux I dont see how it could possibly boot faster.

If you take a truth and follow it blindly, it will become a Falsehood and you a Fanatic.<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pettytheft on 04/27/01 02:08 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Pettytheft]

Most of the Bugs in WinME have been ironed out now. I am able to run pretty stable on a Lethal combo of KT133 mobo, SB Live sound and Radeon LE. Just make sure you get the Via 4.29 chipset drivers(Dont ever use 4.28, they suck!). I've WinME to accept new hardware better than WinME.

However if you have win98SE I would not reccomend spending the money to upgrade to WinME. The only feature that's worth anything to me is the faster boot time.

If you take a truth and follow it blindly, it will become a Falsehood and you a Fanatic.

 

[jerry557]

I've got too much booting with ME that it slows the boot down a little bit. If I remove that stuff I am sure it will be under 30.

 

[Guest]

Personally after using them both I would suggest you use Win98SE. ME for me (and it was a clean install) was nothing but a waste of time and money. Having a Win2000 look to it and System Restore did not make up for both software and hardware incompatibilities and the loss of some good system tools.

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