Microsoft's latest consumer edition of its Windows operating system has changed little since the late beta we last reviewed. However, this gold code release - the final, frozen code version - arrived in its retail state, which gave us the chance to try it out as an end user would. And to prove it's stable, all reviews by myself this month were written under Windows Me.

On this occasion, installation was accompanied by a certain amount of head scratching. We were loading it on to a 933Mhz Intel-based PC with 128Mb of PC133 SDRam on a VIA-based motherboard - a pretty standard spec. Our existing Windows installation was a six-week-old version of 98, so it was a fairly clean system ripe for an upgrade.

On inserting the Millennium CDRom, Windows detected that there was a newer version available and suggested that we upgrade. One click of the OK button later and it was scanning our drives. At this point, however, it halted, warning us that the drivers it needed to update were already in use and asking us to reboot, after which it would continue.

This happened again and again, and we eventually had to resort to msconfig through the Start/Run dialog box and manually deactivate most of the start-up options, effectively putting our existing Windows 98 into a 'non-safe' safe mode.

It's a shame we had to resort to this. After all, it's not as though we were attempting a cross-platform installation, and Microsoft really should be able to selectively close down active drivers that would interfere with its installation routines without user intervention.

Your hard work is rewarded by a flash movie expounding the benefits of Windows Me, but as it's 11Mb in size and installed on your hard drive, we'd recommend wiping it once it has finished. You can find it at windows/options/install/winme.wmv. Windows also drops several cab files here, so it's likely that this new version of the OS will ask for the installation CD less often when you're installing hardware.

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There are several enhancements for the more timid user. Opening your boot drive through My Computer will by default not display the contents but instead a series of links to My Documents, Add/Remove Programs and Windows Search functions, as well as an option to display the drive contents, rather like the warning you see when opening the Windows directory (see screenshot).

Control Panel is adaptive, just like the Start Menu, so only those items you use most often will be displayed, along with an option to activate the remaining entries.

File types are now easier to re-associate. Under Windows 9x, undoing the damage caused by an application that thought it had the right to change all your file associations so that it was the default application for displaying jpeg images could be a real headache, more so if the extension was obscure and buried deep in a list, and not in the alphabetically logical position you would expect.

The View Types dialog has been improved, and can be re-ordered so they are arranged by extension or application. The 'As Web Page' option has also been moved out of the View menu and into Folder Options, which is far more logical.

The improved Media Player continues to impress. This can be downloaded from Microsoft's website for existing Windows users, but is bundled here. The range of skins has been increased to 12 since we reviewed the beta.

By default it extracts data rather than waveforms from your audio compact discs. This puts the headphone socket on the front of your drive out of action, but does enable more than one drive for audio playback even if you have only one connected to your sound card.

We were disappointed that even the highly specified system we were using skipped several times and on several tracks while this review was being written, and paused for several seconds while accessing some websites, Microsoft's press site included.

So, now that we know the prices, it is worth the upgrade. Until Christmas at least, because until the end of December Microsoft has set the price at a sensible £39.99 including VAT. If you've the money it's worth buying if you're still a 95er, although you will have to pay more than users running 98 or 98SE.

Pricing details:

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