Windows Vista: Another Windows ME? I hope so!

Back in 1999, Microsoft sent yours truly a free copy of Windows ME. I installed it, played with it for a week — then uninstalled it and went to Windows 2000 Beta, which I liked a whole lot more.

Why did I dislike ME? I can’t quite put my finger on it. It felt real buggy. I had all sorts of little issues like mysterious crashes, error messages over device drivers and all sorts of conflicting programs and utilities. ME veterans know what I am talking about right?. If I didn’t have another alternative, I would have gone back to Windows 98 — but being that I could switch over to 2000, I did.

In the years to follow, I held on to that CD. I couldn’t even give it away. Windows ME became the joke of the OS world. I know I made a few jokes of my own about it. But now, a good friend of mine, Long Zheng, famous creator of the istartedsomething site, has written a post titled “Why Windows Me deserves more respect.” The article commends ME for the then-overlooked technical innovations it brought to Windows desktop, and draws a parallel between ME and another arguably under appreciated OS: Vista.

Some quotable comments by Zheng include the following: “What a lot of people forget, or don’t even recognize to begin, with is that Windows Me is actually a rather innovative and forward-looking operating system. Instead, almost everyone focuses on its reliability problems which can be largely attributed to the flaky and inherently unstable Win9x kernel.”

He then goes on to list all the great features that came out in ME that we have today, including System Restore, Automatic Updates, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), Windows Image Acquisition, and Movie Maker.

Zheng goes on to say “What’s more, Windows 98 Second Edition was released on May 5, 1999 and Windows XP on October 25, 2001. Between the two, Windows Me was released on September 14, 2000, giving it the shortest Windows lifespan of only 406 days. Taking into account consumer purchasing life-cycles and other factors, what’s left is only a couple of days of fame. Any product preceded and superseded that quickly would have suffered the same fate.”

So, what does this mean in terms of Vista? Well, some are already writing of the passing of Vista as if it’s dead in the water. Articles such as “Vista, we hardly knew you” imply its passing, with secondary titles including the acronym DOA.

I agree with Zheng: It may be a few more Windows releases before we fully appreciate Vista and all it is brought to the table today. On the user side, these features include Windows DVD Maker, the Windows Sidebar and Parental Controls perhaps. On the deeper angle that might include ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive technologies, SuperFetch, BitLocker drive protection, IPv6 support, User Account Control, Integrity Control, Firewall enhancements for both incoming and outgoing traffic… and much, much more. We will look back and say “Oh, that first came out in Vista? I didn’t realize that! Who knew?”

On that day, many will hopefully appreciate Vista a bit more. Those that say “it isn’t much of a change” probably never made it past the Start orb. For some of us — those of us who really know what is going on in the inside of Vista, with all of its features, bells and whistles — that appreciation is already there.

The one difference with Vista, contrary to popular belief, is that it is not going to be retired in 406 days worth of lifespan. No… not at all. Windows 7 isn’t due out until sometime in 2010. We can learn to appreciate Vista, while working WITH Vista. It will be a couple of more years before we can say “Hasta La Vista” to Vista.