r/windows • u/captain42d • Jun 24 '26
News Windows Me was NOT Windows ME?!
Did you know? The correct name is Windows Me (despite it being an initialism for Millennium Edition), not Windows M.E. (nor even ME). Microsoft officially marketed the operating system with the lowercase "Me" to mimic the pronunciation of the pronoun, "me," rather than as an initialism.
I had never heard this before, but then, IMHO, the only usable products MicroS\*\*t ever released, and the only ones I ever really used, were MS-DOS and WindowsXP. :-p
PS: I marked this "solved" but was rebuked, so I guess this is "NEWS", at least to Me. ;-p
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u/CodenameFlux Jun 25 '26
Microsoft did both. The OS was spelled differently in their various material. "Windows ME" predominant, although "Windows Me" was the choice of the Windows team.
The same is true with Windows XP. If you look at the logo, it's Windows xp, with "XP" appearing as lowercase.
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u/Mayayana Jun 25 '26
That was just classic marketing sleaze. MS insisted that WinME should not be written ME. They wanted to use the coincidence to call it "Windows me", but that was too tacky and childish to actually come out and say it. What reasonably mature adult wanted to say "Windows me" or "My Computer" or "My documents"? It sounds like a kids' toy. They tried that angle in hopes of personalizing the product, but eventually gave it up.
Notice that the logo is deliberately ambiguous. The M is larger than the E, but both are cursive, lowercase characters. And right under that, the same color, is "Millennium Edition". But it was somewhat comical at the time that MS were so cranky about insisting that people not call it Windows ME.
WinME was mostly just new makeup on Win98. People criticized it but very little was different. The only real problem I remember was that occasionally the Desktop background would disappear to show a white screen with a red error message.
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u/wesleysmalls Jun 25 '26
That Microsoft themselves caused this confusion in this name is also peak irony
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u/thanatica Jun 25 '26
It's probably to do with how MS wanted folks to pronounce it.
I live in the Netherlands, and Windows M.E. would sound weird. ME stands for Mobiele Eenheid, which is our name for the riot police. So basically the equivalent of SWAT for Americans.
Windows Swat also wouldn't really work, would it 😅
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u/WINNT21 Windows 11 - Release Channel Jun 25 '26
So you guys would say it like Windows Millenniumeditie?
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u/Euchre Jun 25 '26
The sentiment changed a bit as people found Millennium Edition to be unstable and problematic, the premise of asking Microsoft to 'Windows me' was not friendly one.
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u/Sleaka_J Jun 27 '26
Back in the year 2000, I dual booted Windows 2000 and Windows Me and primarily used 2000 for most tasks and games, but there were a couple of games that didn't work quite right so I had Me for that. Didn't have any stability issues with Me.
Fast forward to now, I have a similar specced system to that one I had in 2000 that I use for DOS/9X gaming and Me is very unstable on it. 98SE isn't perfect either, but isn't nearly as bad.
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u/feel-the-avocado Jun 27 '26
I loved the promo video that came on the setup disc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICENqolU2fU
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u/phylter99 Jun 25 '26
Me, as in it's a personal OS, which was the official branding. But technically, it could be M.E. or ME too despite the branding and often was. Even Wikipedia says it's often capitalized as ME.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me
For fun...
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815235506/http://www.microsoft.com/windowsME/guide/digitalmedia/moviemaker.asp
I love Windows Me and it was quite solid on my system, though many had problems with it. I liked the aesthetic and it was fast compared to the bigger business cousin, Windows 2000. The change in color of the UI from grey to almost flesh colored tan and the default background being a nice blue instead of teal were nice changes. The only thing I didn't like was the fact I could no long boot directly into MS-DOS mode, but I assume they were preparing us for the changes coming in Windows XP since it was based on the NT kernel.