That's right, I bought Windows Millennium (or WindMill, as we've been calling it around here).

After checking the web I noticed I'm not the only person who had trouble installing it. However, upon reading the other people's problems, it was obvious most of them needed a new computer, not a new OS.

I picked up WindMill right before work. I got off from work that night and went straight to drinking. With several beers in me I left the bar and went home to install WindMill.

So I get home and I put the CD in and when prompted to make the upgrade of course I click "YES". Not because I really wanted to, but because I really wanted to see exactly how Microsoft could fuck up something that should have been a flawless install.

So it went through the ropes. The CD spun and the little bar went through the little 1% jumps it tends to do when you are copying install files from the CD to the hard drive. Everything was going well and the more I thought about how bitchin' my system was the more I was looking forward to trying out the new user interface that everybody's been licking Microsoft's asshole over.

Microsoft, they can't write drivers, they can't write applications, they don't know the what fuck a TCP-Stack is for, and they sure as hell can't write a fucking Kernal. But damned, if they don't make some pretty stuff. Their GUIs have always been top notch. Right up there with their mice, joysticks, and other bits of user interface products. The fact is, Microsoft is a marketing king. They know how to make something LOOK and FEEL attractive. If Microsoft ran a whorehouse they'd have some fine bitches, that you KNOW would suck! Only problem is that they'd crash on you and you'd never been able to get 'em off once you got 'em on.

More beer then a lockup. The beer was fine, but the lockup had me a little concerned. It's not good for an Operating System to lock up while you are INSTALLING it. It's supposed to wait until after you get working in a major project, so it can crash and destroy 8 hours of work.

But no, this thing certainly was locking up before the installation had even begun! I tried it a few times, then I decided to try it on my other system, a lowly Pentium 200. I didn't follow through with the proceedure simply because it hasn't got enough hard disk space left to download a monthly Tagor Girl Wallpaper much less install a new Microsoft OS. I did learn one thing from starting the install on the Pentium 200, though. It was locking up on the Pentium III 800 right at the point that it loads a large file off of the CD then checks for the presence of a floppy dri... Hey! Wait a minute!

My Pentium III 800 doesn't HAVE a floppy drive! I took it out. Shit! It was obvious that I had to call it quits for the night. I wasn't going to be able to install this Legacy Free OS without a Legacy Floppy Drive. An Irony? Or an indication of what was ahead? More beer and some sleep.

The next day I discovered that all of the places that came to mind to check for a floppy drive had sold out of them. Was this some kind of World-Wide Anti-Microsoft OS Installation conspiracy? Or was the rest of the world feeling pretty much exactly the same as me on the worthlessness of a floppy drive?

Everywhere I went I found that floppy drives were going for about $40, way too high for something I will probably never use after I get the OS installed. If Wal-Mart had one in stock, I simply would have bought it and returned it once WindMill was installed, but I ended up scouring all over town until I ran into a tiny little screwdriver shop that was able to dig one out from behind a pile of dust.

$19. The guy said. So I hand him the cash and I drive home to try this again. After I fought with my case to squeeze the 3.5 inch floppy drive into a bay, I then tugged and fought with the cords and cables. After a few BIOS changes and a boot into Windows 98 to let me know that the floppy drive was indeed working, I then tried this once again.

I clicked SETUP.EXE on the WindMill disk and I was horrified at what happened next. Windows ME installed without a hitch. A few large loading sessions from the CD, a few dozen splash-pages of people with exceedingly retarded looks on their faces and captions of some of the exact same hype and bullshit that Windows 95 spilled onto our screens back up on it's release, and a few "Windows Has Found New Hardware" prompts, and my desktop booted up exactly how I remembered it.

I stared at the screen not sure what to think. My colour scheme had not changed. My start-up sound had not changed. All of the Explorer Buttons and other features added since IE4 that I personally disabled, were STILL disabled. Chloe was still on the desktop. My personal ICONs were still being used. My desktop which contained no more than 4 icons suddenly only contained about 4 more (all of which went promptly into the waste-bin.) Even my personally modified Mouse-Pointers were unchanged.

Only two things had visibly changed. The first of which was my boot-splash (LOGO.SYS) which had been replaced with a very lame Windows ME splash screen. I dropped my back-up of the file into it's place and that was fixed. The other thing that was changed and I'm not sure why I noticed in the first place, was that the scheduled tasks icon in the tooltray was gone. Speaking of the tooltray, the additional toolbars often added by IE and Windows upgrades were STILL disabled. And my Taskbar was at the top of the screen where it should ship by default with all Microsoft Operating Systems, but isn't because Microsoft are fucking idiots and the users are very obviously just as stupid.

So the real question now begins, what has changed? And I start the hunt for the "New Stuff". One thing I noticed upon poking around on my system is that it actually WAS a tad bit faster, but that could be related to having just been installed. My network settings had been kept, and ICQ and AIM were both Online the moment I thought to check. No problems with the network.

It's now been a few days, and I'm still looking for the "Major Changes" in the user interface. Oh, sure there are a few extra features, such as the destination buttons on the IE download prompts, and the additional settings and easier accessability of options when setting up dial-up accounts, which I don't use so they don't matter to me. Other nice changes are the ability to customize Desktop Explorer windows to show various file properties in Details Mode, such as sound file sample rates or comments. Full view windows will show picture thumbnails, and Large Icon view will auto-arrange the icons even if auto-arrange is disabled but only right up until the point that you personally change an icon's location, then the location is remembered.

Also, for people who haven't bothered to disable Active-Desktop and Web-Content-In-Windows because they think it's a pain to change and it never "Truely Stays Gone", it seems they've made it easier to disable the bullshit all from one set-up with 4 simple options. Had it not still been disabled from my Windows 98 configuration, turning off the shit again would have been quick and painless.

PROS

Keeps your settings. You won't have to download 100 megs of updates and patches to Windows 98 if you ever do a clean install. Has a hand-full of new features that most power-users won't ever notice (except maybe the Restore-Point feature). Supports modern hardware. Slightly faster. You can move your task-bar to the top of the screen where it belongs then lock it in place.

CONS

It's a Microsoft OS. It's an expensive service patch. You're probably going to have to eventually install it. It's now easier to disable all the bullshit but most users will still run the annoying, bloated, default configuration with browser-buttons in Desktop Windows and the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

Conclusion

I installed a floppy drive for nothing. Anybody else who was having trouble installing this service pack needs a new computer, not a new OS.

Jace of Fuse!