I will admit right now that I have Windows ME. I heard so many terrible things about it but I like it a lot. I have no problems. I know a guy that worked on the project and he said that Windows ME was a mistake and should have never happened. Does anyone else use Windows ME? Also, what exactly is wrong with Windows ME?
Its probably the worst, in terms of bugs, crashed, compatability, speed, efficiency, etc. OS from Microsoft . . . .
Seriously, go buy win 2k or winXP.
if you care enough. If its good enough, then just leave good enough alone.
Well, I distinctly remember a problem with a couple BSODs per day, while I now have win 2k and hav enot seen a bsod for months. And besides, I’m guessing it hogs more memory than it SHOULD take for an OS 
Basically…XP was taking too long to get out of development at MS, so they threw together a version to release between 98 and what we now know as XP. In trying to add in some of the features they wanted for the version, they actually broke more than they fixed, and made some things which were actually somewhat easy to do a lot harder…
Do you think it might be better to get Linux, I have a copy of it on CD, instead of upgrading to XP? I was thinking about maybe partitioning the drive and putting both. What is better about Linux than XP and vise versa?
XP and Linux won’t automatically work together as a dual boot (or at least redhat) but you can follow directions on their site to fix it…
Anyhoo, what do you DO on your computer? What’s ur experience with a linux OS?
Question… How DO you make a computer dual boot OSs. Say, if I have 2 HDs, one with win2k and the other with a linux distro…?
dual booting windows & linux is hard, as windows likes to overwrite the MBR. i’ve tried it before, half heartedly, and never got it to work the way it’s supposed to. i have made it work, through my BIOS, which supports booting from any of the four motherboard IDE Controllers, or by using a little program called “Smartboot” (look for it on sourceforge) which allows you to boot any drive/partition in your computer.
i say just use linux, i’ve had so much more fun (and frustration too, I guess) with linux on my computer. plus, there’s that good feeling that you actually know how the computer is working for once… 
Back to my question, I use my computer for web design, cause I am working on several large websites. I use it for IM and e-mail and to play lots of games. I am sort of learning computer programming but I am having some bad luck with it. A friend on my team, Chris, suggested trying Linux. I saw the version, Red Hat on his laptop. It looked really cool and he gave me a copy of Yellow Dog Linux, not sure which version. I am getting ready to install it on one of my other computers in my room, but I figured that I could try it out on my main computer.
In order to get things to work right, install Windows FIRST, then linux…after windows is installed, it won’t touch the MBR unless you tell it to…and the linux boot loader(LILO or GRUB, depending on your distro) is smart enough to recognize a windows partition.
Also, MAKE A LINUX BOOT FLOPPY!!! In the event that something within windows messes with the MBR, causing you to only be able to get into windows, a linux boot floppy will allow you to reinstall LILO or GRUB. I know mandrake’s setup tool gives you a chance to create one during the linux install, i can’t speak for any other distros however…
However, sharing partitions is a bit trickier…as of the last linux distro I played around with(Mandrake 9 or 9.1 i believe), NTFS support was read-only. So, if you want to be able, for example, to modify files in your windows “My Documents” folder from within linux(i.e. using OpenOffice,) your windows partition will need to be FAT32. Unfortunately, without a third party tool such as partitionmagic, you can’t convert an NTFS partition to FAT32 without recreating the partition, which causes you to lose all of the data in the partition.
Thanks for all of your help. I will let you know if I do all this.
Personally, my view on the whole linux issue is unless you want to go into IT or some other hardware-heavy tech field, don’t bother.
WindowsXP fixed almost everything wrong with the 9x/ME versions; it’s stable, and it’s a lot more ‘connected.’ If all you’re going to be using your computer for is web design, chat, and programming, Linux is going to cause you extreme headaches down the road. Just dish out the cash for XP - there’s nothing really bad with it.