Many, many years ago, long before I was a Microsoft MVP, I was a beta tester for Windows Me which was codenamed ‘Millennium” or ‘Milly’ as we beta testers referred to the project.
Now, I will be the first to admit that Windows Me was not the greatest version of Windows, and one was better off to stick with Windows 98 than to upgrade to Me. Windows Me was released (or escaped as some have opined) in September 2000.
Being a beta tester in those days was a lot of fun. We were a select group that had access to various builds as well as bug-finding contests (two of the prizes are seen on the left) and a private newsgroup for interacting with other testers. Not like today where Microsoft releases betas publicly for one and all to try, but don’t get me started…
Anyway, I was cleaning out some old CDs and came across some interesting stuff from those days….
For instance, here are my PC specs from those days:
Intel Celeron 466a PPGA, 66Mhz bus
64 MB SDRAM
3.4 Samsung HD
AGP 8 Meg on Motherboard
56K Micromodem
24X CD-ROM
Laughable by today’s standards. No high-speed Internet connection then, either. Today, the cheapest notebook at Wal-Mart has more computing power than that desktop did!
I also had some Windows Me backgrounds on that CD, some of which were designed by fellow testers:
James is the owner of WindowsTalk.org and has been a Microsoft Windows Consumer MVP since 2003.
I would love to see some of the older designs for OS. I can remember how basic Windows used to be, all grey boxes. I remember something we used to use at school called Caxton, or something like that. It’s funny how quickly technology has moved.