Are you feeling okay?! Pretty emotional over an operating system aren't you?! Take a chill pill!
I retract my claim that ME is limited to 128MB RAM. I did a Google search and found that it runs into problems at 512MB, but mostly optimization issues.
My experience was upgrading two ME systems from 128MB to 256MB, and the Control Panel->System dialog -> memory management showed that only 128MB was available to the system. This was with a single 256MB SIMM. I installed Windows 2000 replacing ME and the full 256MB became usable (the motherboard was not the cause).
I replaced ME with Win2000 since ME kept having power-down problems - where screen turns black with a flashing cursor and the ATX soft power switch froze on forcing me to unplug the system to reset it. I had the same problem with both ME installations and installed a Microsoft patch that improved the situation but didn't resolve it completely.
I have been using Windows before protected mode windows became available and was thrilled when 3.1 was released. My experiences with ME made me swear it off, and I have systems here running 3.1, 95, 98, ME, Win2000 and multiple flavors of UNIX. I don't give a %&$@ about any operating system to endorse or shoot it down - unless it has caused me headaches , and I’ll will share my experience with those trying to avoid the headaches. Windows ME, to me, is a migraine.