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It was horribly unstable. So bad, in fact, that a friend told me that a shop refused to work on her laptop because it had Windows ME on it. I thought 98SE was a much better product. Its registry was a mess if memory serves me correctly.

The only real difficulty i had with Windows ME was when i got one of the first computer virii that existed, an old boot sector exploit. My own fault using old floppies that hadn't been virus checked. All that was required was the insertion of the DOS Disk, and an fdisk /mbr command.

As i said in my post, the key to Windows ME was to keep the registry clean. For that purpose i use System Mechanic's registry cleaning tool once a week. The laptop still runs fine with Windows ME.

Fact is that all operating systems will have individual quirks. This includes the various flavours of Windows. For example: i run SuSE 9.2 Professional on this machine with a dialup connection. Last week as i was getting SuSE updates from one of their ftp sites, my connection died. i couldn't get back on line. It seems that my modem commands were changed. i didn't know the Hays modem commands, so i was pretty screwed. Couldn't have the modem redetected and configured for some reason. Ended up that i had to insert a Knoppix CD, run kppp and look at the modem command set after i configured the Internet tool. Copied that into SuSE's kppp utility, and was back in business. The quirk involved is that SuSE (and Redhat/Fedora) both have messed up their internet connection tools. i still can't connect with kinternet.

Ironically, Windows ME was the most stable of the 9X line for me, but that's because I build my own white boxes. I found that most people having trouble with ME were either upgraders or users of OEM versions on HPs, Compaqs, etc. OEM's put their own flaky drivers in the systems, and those machines were absolute crap, especially HPs. I found that when you do a clean install on generic, industry standard ATX board, ME was really stable. Also, few manufacturers tried to write new ME-specific drivers when they should have. And while it required more CPU horsepower and RAM than 98, it used excess memory more efficiently. After 96 mb in 98, you got declining returns in your RAM performance (this from the mouth of a Microsoft rep). You could put 256, 384 MBs on a ME box and it would be used much more efficiently and effectively.

Gotta disagree with the prior poster that said ME was XP with a 9X kernel....it was more like a 9X kernel with Windows 2000's looks and (some) features.