Is anyone aware of any conflicts with Windows ME?

[Tim Peters]

[attribution lost]
> I'll be receiving my new PC shortly and it is coming with Windows
> ME preloaded.  Has there been any testing with Python and ME.  I'd
> really hate to crash it as soon as I get it.

[Tim, makes reassuring noises, then]
> However, since you seem to believe that a Microsoft operating system
> crashing is something you can avoid, I'll assume you're a pretty new
> user of Microsoft operating systems <wink>.

[Grant Griffin]
> Au contraire! (and maybe even "au jus" ;-)
>
> I'm sure you've done more "torture testing" of Windows than I have, Tim,

None at all, at least not on purpose.  But I did spend the preceding 6 years
working on consumer & commercial speech recognition software, which pushes
everything to the limits, and ...

> but even though I have seen this reported frequently on Usenet, it's
> contrary to my own experience (at least).  I've used NT 4.0 for several
> years now, and my machine has been very stable for the last couple of
> years.  In fact, I honestly can't remember the last time it blue-screened
> on me.

NT and ME aren't in the same class.  Can't you just *hear* the fear in our
inquisitor's voice?  I can, and so can ME <wink>.  NT very rarely crashed
unless I was playing with prototype drivers (sound cards, telephony cards),
but still loved being rebooted (try running a broad timing benchark after a
reboot, then run it again at one-week intervals; turn on lots of stats in
Task Manager and watch resources leak away over time; etc).

I'm finding Win98SE remarkably stable compared to Win95, but still no
competitor to NT.  It doesn't crash so much as it freezes hard and needs a
power-cycle to recover.  This has happened often enough that I've come to
despise the cheery auto-scandisk msg informing me that if I don't want to
see Scandisk auto-running again, I should shut down Win98 properly in the
future <wink/grrrrrrrrr>.

> The key (for NT 4.0, at least) is not to "stress it" by changing the its
> drivers, memory, or whatever: once you work through the initial problems
> of a configuration change, it's pretty stable.
>
> then-again,-maybe-it-works-better-now-because-service-pack-3
>    -disabled-that-valuable-'blue-screen'-feature-<wink>-ly y'rs,

Nope!  It's still there.  Another thing NT desperately needs is a disk
defrag utility (speech recog. slings large data files, and we timed factors
of 2 difference in startup before & after a defrag).  If you're too cheap to
buy a real one, you'll end up with Diskkeeper Lite.  That blue-screened NT
about once a week on me, even after Service Pack 5.

BTW, I buy computers for my non-techie sisters too, and always get them the
latest version of consumer Windows.  I don't hate them <wink>.  But they've
gotten very good at rebooting too.  It's just a fact of consumer Windows
life.

and-they-can-reboot-10000-times-before-they-could-learn-how-to-log-on-to-
    linux-once-ly y'rs  - tim