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,