I'm am almost dissapointed to do this, afterall, ME has been a fine
performer eversince I discovered this ng and other ME forums on the 'net to
help me tame ME enough to be able to believe that I would never need to move
to XP, ...but recently, I've been very disappointed in ME's performance and
reliability eversince I changed my video card to a newer and "better" one
(worked ok for a while - it only caused a problem with Shutdown), and
eversince I upped the ram from 256 to 768. The various tweaks to fool ME
to limit it to 512 or LESS is not working. I am actually running out of
resources sooner! Very annoying. The whole idea of adding more ram was to
be able to use it. There was a modest speed boost in screen rendering, and
application loading with the extra ram, but I still can't seem to have more
apps open at the same time which I need.

So.. I'm moving on to Ubuntu. The winapps that I absolutely need will be
hosted on my XP'd Thinkpad.

ME first came into my life when I purchased a new 1gHz, AGP 2x 64meg, 256meg
ram, 40gig box in year 2000. The first upgrade it ever needed was a
critical one - a new 120gig hdd. About 3 years into its life ME had started
to insist on Scandisk at every boot (even after successful scandisk and
Shutdown), plus the 40gig drive produced strange intermittent clunking
noises. The new 120gig hdd solved that problem. But interestingly.. that
same 40gig hdd is now parked into a "spare" 500mHz 256meg ram pc, loaded
with Ubuntu, and there are NO problems.

We've probably all been hanging on to ME because we're adamant to not dish
out more $'s to MS. If your needs for faster processor, more ram, and new
programs do not exist, then ME should serve you well.

I really really really wanted to believe that ME would serve me well for the
rest of my days with modest upgrades as required. Afterall, I upgraded the
original box with USB 2.0 and even replaced the original NIC. ME continued
to perform well. But all I really wanted was to be able to load atleast 3
apps in memory (Wordperfect, my browser, and WindowsExplorer as I navigated
through files over my network). Suddenly, Explorer.exe would close and fail
to reload the Taskbar apps! The only solution was to reboot. Very time
consuming and frustrating. Then when I learned that ME is theoretically
limited to 512meg ram and that the only way to use more ram is to trick ME
to think there is LESS, that disappointed me. Under those conditions it's
better to get a new OS that can handle that. And.. I really don't want to
spend more $'s on a new box when I've already invested in a fine 120gig hdd,
USB 2.0 expansion, 768meg total ram, and a better (DVI-capable) video card.

My appreciation and many thanks go out to all the fine folks who helped me
with my ME questions over the years. I enjoyed helping the few people with
my insights too when I could.

...Ogg.