Windows ME

**Windows Millennium Edition**, or **Windows Me** (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is a graphical operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. It is the successor to both Windows 98 and Windows 98 Second Edition (SE), and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, with general availability on September 14, 2000.

Windows Me was the last operating system released in the Windows 9x series that was targeted specifically at home PC users, and included Internet Explorer 5.5, Windows Media Player 7, and the new Windows Movie Maker software, which provided basic video editing and was designed to be easy to use for home users. Microsoft also incorporated features first introduced in Windows 2000, which had been released as a business-oriented operating system seven months earlier, into the graphical user interface, shell, and Windows Explorer. Windows Me was a continuation of the Windows 9x model and still DOS-based like its predecessors, albeit with restricted access to real mode MS-DOS in order to decrease system boot time.

Windows Me was heavily panned by many users and critics, mainly due to speed and stability issues, along with hardware compatibility issues and its removal of real mode DOS support. Windows Me is considered to be one of the worst operating systems of all time. Consequently, most home users remained with Windows 98, while some moved to Windows 2000 despite the latter being enterprise-oriented. In October 2001, Windows XP was released to the public, and became the successor of Windows Me, popularizing most of its features and introducing more visual themes, while being based upon the more stable Windows NT kernel. Extended support for Windows Me ended on July 11, 2006.

## New and updated features

### User interface

Windows Me featured the shell enhancements inherited from Windows 2000 such as personalized menus, customizable Windows Explorer toolbars, auto-complete in Windows Explorer address bar and Run box, Windows 2000 advanced file type association features, displaying comments in shortcuts as tooltips, extensible columns in Details view (IColumnProvider interface), icon overlays, integrated search pane in Windows Explorer, sort by name function for menus, *Places bar* in common dialogs for *Open* and *Save*, cascading Start menu special folders, some Plus! 95 and Plus! 98 themes, and updated graphics. The notification area in Windows Me and later supported 16-bit high color icons. The Multimedia control panel was also updated from Windows 98. *Taskbar and Start Menu* options allowed disabling of the drag and drop feature and could prevent moving or resizing the taskbar, which was easier for new users.

### Digital media

* Windows Movie Maker: This utility is based on DirectShow and Windows Media technologies to provide Microsoft Windows computer systems with basic video capture and edit capabilities. It provides users with the ability to capture, edit, and re-encode media content into the Windows Media format, a tightly compressed format which requires a minimal amount of storage space on the computer's hard disk, when compared to many other media formats.
* Windows Media Player 7: The new version of the Windows multimedia player software introduces jukebox functionality featuring the Media Library, support for CD burning, an integrated media encoder, and the ability to transfer music directly to portable devices. Another new feature is its radio tuner that can be used to search for and connect to radio stations over the internet. Users can also customize the look and feel of the user interface through interactive skins.
* Windows DVD Player: The software DVD player in Windows Me is a redesigned version of the one featured in Windows 98 which, unlike its predecessor, does not require a dedicated decoder card for DVD playback. Instead, it supports software decoding through a third-party decoder.
* Image Preview: In Windows Me, images can be viewed by using the Image Preview utility. It allows users to rotate an image, print or zoom in/out an image. Image Preview supports images with .`BMP`, .`DIB`, .`EMF`, .`GIF`, .`JPEG`, .`PNG`, .`TIF` and .`WMF` file formats. The *My Pictures* folder also integrates previewing images.
* Games: Windows Me includes version 7.1 of the DirectX API which introduced DirectPlay Voice, and also offers several new games: Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, Internet Hearts, Internet Reversi, Internet Spades. It also includes Spider Solitaire from Plus! 98 and Pinball from Plus! for Windows 95.