XP was the “merger” - the first NT based system for the consumer market.
You’re thinking of Windows 2000. Win2K was released before Windows ME, and was widely sold on consumer market computers. When ME came out, and was pretty terrible, Win2K remained as the popular consumer option.
A lot of people did use it on home computers (myself included) but the target was still businesses. XP had TV ads and colorful themes, and all that, while Windows 2000… Didn’t. (Well maybe on C-SPAN or something) And the most basic (major) edition was “Professional” instead of something like “Home” as XP had.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the big box computer makers did ship with it to home users, but it wasn’t “meant” for them.
The googles tells me that Win2K was released Feb 17, 2000, and that ME was released Sep 14, 2000. Plenty of time for word to get out about how much better 2000 was than 9x even for home use.
Ah but in reality that wasn’t entirely the case, direct X compatible drivers were a big sticking point basically until XP came along. Windows 2000 was fantastic as a productivity OS, but it wasn’t fully there for the home user yet
I do recall that for some heavier (in 2000 lol) gaming, people stuck with 9x for a while longer, until better gaming support for 2K came around at least.
It was also a lot more expensive than Windows 9x/me, so most consumer desktops went that way. The only people running 2000 were professionals and nerds that weren’t running Linux.
Oh sure - the intent was for it to be a business-centric OS, it definitely was not flashy, but it was just so much better than 9x that plenty of computer makers made it available, and lots of people chose it over 98SE.
You’re thinking of Windows 2000. Win2K was released before Windows ME, and was widely sold on consumer market computers. When ME came out, and was pretty terrible, Win2K remained as the popular consumer option.
A lot of people did use it on home computers (myself included) but the target was still businesses. XP had TV ads and colorful themes, and all that, while Windows 2000… Didn’t. (Well maybe on C-SPAN or something) And the most basic (major) edition was “Professional” instead of something like “Home” as XP had.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the big box computer makers did ship with it to home users, but it wasn’t “meant” for them.
Yeah windows ME came out around the same time as 2000 and was the consumer targeted OS
The googles tells me that Win2K was released Feb 17, 2000, and that ME was released Sep 14, 2000. Plenty of time for word to get out about how much better 2000 was than 9x even for home use.
Ah but in reality that wasn’t entirely the case, direct X compatible drivers were a big sticking point basically until XP came along. Windows 2000 was fantastic as a productivity OS, but it wasn’t fully there for the home user yet
I do recall that for some heavier (in 2000 lol) gaming, people stuck with 9x for a while longer, until better gaming support for 2K came around at least.
It was also a lot more expensive than Windows 9x/me, so most consumer desktops went that way. The only people running 2000 were professionals and nerds that weren’t running Linux.
Oh sure - the intent was for it to be a business-centric OS, it definitely was not flashy, but it was just so much better than 9x that plenty of computer makers made it available, and lots of people chose it over 98SE.