October 29th, 2008

The Ghost of Windows Me

Posted by Christopher Dawson @ 6:24 am

Categories: Education Technology

Tags: Sea, Redmond, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows ME, Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows XP, Software, Christopher Dawson

Inspired by Annabelle Lee, By Edgar Allen Poe
(It is almost Halloween, after all)

It was many and many a year ago,
In Redmond, not so far from the sea,
That a miserable operating system was born
By the name of Windows Me;
And this OS was birthed for no other reason
Than to bridge the gap to Windows XP.

I was a user and it was barely usable,
Released too early from Redmond, not so far from the sea;
I hated it with a passion that was unbridled -
We all hated Windows Me;
Open source was not yet mature enough
To take the place of Me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
Courtesy of Redmond, not so far from the sea,
Would it be Windows 2000 or Windows XP
That we would use to replace that hated Windows Me?
So my sysadmin came
And upgraded me.
Forever, I hoped, discarding this horror
From Redmond, not so far from the sea.
Users not yet upgraded
Went envying Windows XP and me
With service packs and patches
Flying out of Redmond, not so far from the sea,
Coming out of the cloud at night,
Bloating and slowing my beloved Windows XP.

But no lessons were learned
By Redmond, not so far from the sea.
No wiser for their terrible Windows Me,
and neither Gates nor Ballmer prevented the release of Vista,
From Redmond, not so far from the sea.
Now, however, OS X and Ubuntu called to me
As support faded for Windows XP.
Slick, stable, and sometimes free,
*nix quickly made me forget the aging Windows XP;
And now my computer rarely boots
To an OS from Redmond, not so far from the sea;
And so, day and night, the computer by my side,
Has not Vista inside.
Whether Mac, Dell, or HP,
Its OS is not from Redmond, not so far from the sea.