2/17    Does WinME or Win2K Home Ed require less CPU power and memory?  Thanks.
        \_ cpu/memory?  That's the basis of your OS decision?  ME is a flaming
           pile of goose dung.  Use 2k.  There was never a reason for ME to
           ship except maybe MS's bottom line.
           \_ Yeah.  I'm setting up a PC for my wife, and all she does is
              running Excel and checking her Outlook mail in a browser over a
              modem.  Any non-Windoze OS is out of the question.  So it all
              comes down to which Windoze launches Excel faster and which one
              opens a huge .xls file faster, which I think translates to which
              Windoze leaves more free memory and CPU cycles behind.  The only
              other requirement is USB support because I need it to talk to a
              digicam, otherwise I'll just go 95.  Come to think of it, maybe
              98 is my best bet.
              \_ Except that opening excel really fast, and then crashing five
                 minutes before your wife goes to whack the Save button
                 probably would be suboptimal.  Go with 2K.  Any PC made in
                 the last TWO YEARS is fast enough (TM).  RAM is dirt cheap.
                 Drop a gig of RAM in and never worry about it again. -dans
        \_ The go with win2k people are right. but if you really want to debate
           two OS's, you should debate Win98SE vs. Win2k. WinME really was a
           total piece of shit. Some people still prefer Win98 to Win2k for
           some odd reason. Maybe they just never needed to upgrade because 98
           runs just fine.

           DO NOT RUN Windows Millenium!!!

           \_ I had dual boot w2k/w98 for more than 2 years when I realised
              I hadn't booted 98 in a year.  Poof!  Single boot 2k.
           \_ Thanks for the info!  I didn't know ME is a worse POS than the
              other Win's.
           \_ Agreed.  I have WinME on my HP Pavilion, and it blows (but the
              geniuses at HP haven't gotten around to building drivers for
              Win2k).  I run Win98 at my labs because it's cheaper and a
              lot more stable.  --erikred
        \_ I just ran NT for the 1st time since 2000.  Wow.  It is faster on
           an old K6-2-300 than W2K on a P1000.  NT was designed to run WELL
           in 32MB Ram.  Win98 seems to like things starting 128MB.
        \_ there is no such thing as Win2K Home Edition.  Are you thinking
           of Win2K Professional or WinXP Home?
           \_ W2k only means W2k Pro.  No one ever said anything about the
              bogus "home" edition of that jonny-come-lately slower version of
              W2k with the toyish GUI.
              \_There are at least four versions of Win2k. For whatever reason,
              my experience has been that Win2K Server runs a bit better than
              Pro if you don't install all the server crap. Very strange, but
              I attribute it to MS weirdness.
        \_ Yea, last time my friend bought Windows ME to play some PC games,
           it crashes a few minutes after it comes up, everytime, even with a
           clean install.  His computer runs linux and older versions of windows
           just fine.  He got so mad he threw his copy down the dumpster.