system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why was Windows ME so horrible?

I've heard tons of horrible stories about Windows ME, but WHY was it so horrible? I've never experienced it first-hand.
gpt
There were a few factors.

The first, and probably the most important, is that XP came just over a year later and murdered it. Unlike Windows Vista, it never really ended up having a chance to have many of its issues worked out before consumers migrated.

In terms of the problems that it faced, it was slow. Very, very slow. It's infamous for having had some memory leaks on launch that made it unstable. Unlike Vista or XP, which also had some performance complaints, it failed to deliver other features users were interested in. Security was still bad, there was still a gap between Windows NT and DOS-based systems, and, most damningly of all, it broke compatibility with many DOS-based applications.

The biggest thing to remember, though, is that it was preceded by the much better Windows 98 SE and followed by the also much better Windows XP. Its inability to show significant improvements to justify its cost and issues was the factor that killed its public perception moreso than any of the things that were actually wrong with it.

edit: In terms of the constant horror stories that you hear on the Internet, they're more meme than anything. Windows ME was only out for about a year before XP completely erased it, most users never bothered upgrading, and it ended up being used mainly by people who upgraded personal computers between September 2000 and October 2001. Most of the people who talk about how shit ME is have never used it.