Windows 2000 is so named because it was intended to be the version that finally united the consumer level 9x series with the enterprise level NT series. Instead, at the last minute it was determined that consumer machines were not quite ready for Windows 2000 (which is really just NT with DirectX merged more cleanly with it than 4.0) as the average household systems really did not have the processor and memory needed to make 2000 appear adequately speedy.

So Microsoft held back the official merger of the two OSes and the death of the 9x line and hurridly pushed out a new update to the 9x series called Me. Me was not called 2000 because all the marketing and information released to date had the next NT under that moniker. Thus MS totally messed up their own naming convention.

I find that Win 2K runs all games designed for XP with no problems what so ever and is functionally very similar to XP with only some bells, whistles, annoying arse DRM, and an even more annoying copy protection implementation missing. Those missing items (and the outrageous pricing scheme) are the only reason I haven't moved to XP.

This comment was edited on Jan 13, 01:14.