Alternative timeline: A better Windows ME

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Fri Jan 07, 2022 4:45 pm

On 1/7/2022 at 6:17 PM, SlithyMatt said:

Isn't that basically what happened? The timeline was just a bit compressed.

And in the end ME was buggy and was dropped. I would try to make this not happen. I would love to have nowdays a modern and stable version of Win95-Win98-WinME line.

martinot · Post by **martinot** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 1:41 am

On 1/5/2022 at 9:24 PM, xanthrou said:

What if Bill Gates put you and your development team at Microsoft at charge of Windows ME's development?

Would you make sure not to rush Windows ME's development and keep adding new features that would lay the foundation of NT-based Windows XP?

Or just give up with ME and keep developing NT-based Neptune by merging 9X and NT kernels, eventuality making an operating system very similar to XP?

To be clear and honest; the kernels never "merged". It never happend that way.

They just implemented an improved version of Direct X and PnP, and added more APIs and more drivers to the NT system.

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 5:20 am

On 1/8/2022 at 3:41 AM, martinot said:

To be clear and honest; the kernels never "merged". It never happend that way.

They just implemented an improved version of Direct X and PnP, and added more APIs and more drivers to the NT system.

I'm not really an expert in question, but I remember I read somewhere, that there were two lines:

- Win95-Win98-WinME line, which originally was targeted to single user home use;

- WinNT-Win2000 line, multi-user system, intended for groups like corp offices, student classes, etc.

WinXP-Win7-Win8-Win10-Win11 is considered to be the new single "merged" line, because it merges these two lines in one.

And though they might did not merged kernels literally , they modified Win2000, adding features from Win95-Win98-WinME line, to make it better suit for home consumer needs. For the end users of both lines it was definitely a merge, because since then WinXP was used everywhere.

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 6:56 am

On 1/8/2022 at 12:20 AM, Cyber said:

For the end users of both lines it was definitely a merge, because since then WinXP was used everywhere.

The merger was more marketing than anything. The reality is the Win95/98/Me line was discontinued, and Microsoft made a home user priced license for the next NT version, which was XP. NT 4.0 had reimplemented the Win95 desktop manager, but that was really a superficial similarity, just like how NT 3.51 looked like Windows 3.11, but were completely different behind that desktop. The replacement of Me with XP in the home market was effectively the death of MS-DOS and Microsoft focused on a single Kernal (NT) with configurations for different use cases (home/small business user, enterprise desktop client, server).

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 8:46 am

At first, I hated not having a DOS backbone sitting under Windows, I really liked DOS and didn't want to give it up, even though I liked Windows. I got over it of course, but I was not happy about it at the time.

Old dog, new tricks, you get the idea. It sucks to watch things you grew up on, used for many years, slowly go obsolete before your eyes. ?

TomXP411 · Post by **TomXP411** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 8:53 am

On 1/8/2022 at 12:46 AM, Strider said:

At first, I hated not having a DOS backbone sitting under Windows, I really liked DOS and didn't want to give it up, even though I liked Windows. I got over it of course, but I was not happy about it at the time.

Old dog, new tricks, you get the idea. It sucks to watch things you grew up on, used for many years, slowly go obsolete before your eyes. ?

As a gamer, I had to give up a lot of software to use XP full time. I did end up running a dual boot system for a while, but I eventually just decided to let the old software go...

martinot · Post by **martinot** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 10:49 am

On 1/8/2022 at 6:20 AM, Cyber said:

I'm not really an expert in question, but I remember I read somewhere, that there were two lines:

- Win95-Win98-WinME line, which originally was targeted to single user home use;

- WinNT-Win2000 line, multi-user system, intended for groups like corp offices, student classes, etc.

WinXP-Win7-Win8-Win10-Win11 is considered to be the new single "merged" line, because it merges these two lines in one.

And though they might did not merged kernels literally , they modified Win2000, adding features from Win95-Win98-WinME line, to make it better suit for home consumer needs. For the end users of both lines it was definitely a merge, because since then WinXP was used everywhere.

Yes, that was what I said; they did not merge the kernerls in any way, shape or form. I also commented, and agree with you, that the extended the APIs of the NT-line of systems with things to better support home users; better PnP (easier to add new hardware), better and fuller DirectX-implementation (important for games), etc. That was exactly what happened.

I can not see how it even woud be tecnically or practically possible to merge such different kernels, even if someone at Microsoft would have thought that would have been a good idea (which I do not think).

martinot · Post by **martinot** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 11:08 am

On 1/8/2022 at 9:46 AM, Strider said:

At first, I hated not having a DOS backbone sitting under Windows, I really liked DOS and didn't want to give it up, even though I liked Windows. I got over it of course, but I was not happy about it at the time.

Old dog, new tricks, you get the idea. It sucks to watch things you grew up on, used for many years, slowly go obsolete before your eyes. ?

I liked and used Windows from start. Started with Windows 1.01, 2.0, 2.11 etc. before it generally took of in the market with 3.0 and 3.1. That said it was never any good OS or foundation with DOS in the bottom. It was co-operative mutitasking (each application had to work 100% and voluntary give up with CPU with a message passing scheme), and no memory protection (a bad pointer in just one application could corrupt any part of memory, and bring the whole system down).

Eventually I got tired of all the crashes in DOS/Win, that I moved to OS/2 and (after using Unix at school) FreeBSD. They where much more stable OS (except that OS/2 desktop WPS was quite buggy, and OS/2 could also get unresponsive to input through the SIQ, the single input message que). The problem with me running OS/2 and FreeBSD was lack of software. Later OS/2 could run some Win 3.0-applications, but the compatibility where never perfect.

I was so happy when Microsoft announced that they woud ditch the old DOS/Win line, and introduce a new OS/2 3.0 aka OS/2 NT, and later (after officially breaking up the co-operation with IBM) Windows NT (they changed the desktop and user interface from OS/2 style to Win3-style).

It was quite unfinsihed and slow when I started to beta test NT 3.1 (or if it was even before pre-beta versions) as I got an early access to that from Microsoft. It was quite memory heavy in the first release of Windows NT 3.1 version, but got very good in Windows NT 3.5 version in 1994. When Win95 got released in 1995 I saw no idea to run that as my main OS. I did install it for dual boot (just like I had with DOS previously), but just purely for running some games. With NT 3.51 in late 1995 it got even better (and full support for running the additional APIs that Win95 had extended the Win32 API with). Now I could run Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc. in pure 32-bit versions on a stable working system. Great stuff! ?

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Sat Jan 08, 2022 6:21 pm

On 1/8/2022 at 2:53 AM, TomXP411 said:

As a gamer, I had to give up a lot of software to use XP full time. I did end up running a dual boot system for a while, but I eventually just decided to let the old software go...

That was pretty much my case, and for a while I solved it the same way, dual boot. Eventually I built myself 2 different systems, my XP rig, and a maxed out Windows 95 OSR2.5/DOS rig using era appropriate hardware. I had that second rig running well into the Windows 7 days. I eventually parted it out and just went full emulation using DOSBox.

@martinot My first Windows was 2.11, but I rarely used it. I used and liked Norton Commander. By the time Windows 3.1 was released, I started using it a lot more. Windows 95 I loved. I didn't initially view Windows as an OS, just a piece of software like anything else, a fancy file navigator. It wasn't until Win 95 that I really started to see it for what it was, and the power it had.

I have very little issues with stability on my DOS/Win systems, thus I never had a reason to move off it. So while I messed around with OS/2, I never ran it myself. I played a lot of games, and everything I used was designed for DOS/Windows, was easier to find, that's where all the support was, and I got good and getting them to run and do what I wanted. So I just stuck with it. I wish I had had messed with it more in retrospect, but like I said, I was happy with DOS/Win so the need never arose.

xanthrou · Post by **xanthrou** » Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:13 am

On 1/5/2022 at 11:05 PM, SlithyMatt said:

They should have just called it another special edition of Win98 (which it was, under the hood), made it a free service pack for existing Win98 users, and saved all the marketing money and public embarrassment, then put out XP when it was ready.

Perhaps 'Windows 98 Millennium Edition'.