Fanatical devotion of Apple fans and the small core or technologically-advanced Linux users notwithstanding, Microsoft still runs the world’s PCs. Some 90% of them still run Windows. Of course this has less to do with the operating system’s merits than with Microsoft’s inclusive business practice, bundling the operating system with nearly every consumer PC sold. As CNET noted in their report on the release of the year-2000 release of a new Windows OS “Windows Me will sell well, but partly because consumers won’t be able to avoid it.”

On this day, September 14, in 2000, Microsoft released Windows Millennium Edition, the last of the so-called 9x editions, after Windows 95 and 98.

Not to be confused with Windows 2000 — the professional, Windows NT-based version that released in March of 2000 — this version was aimed straight at home users. It did incorporate several features from its professional counterpart, such as the new Windows Explorer and, for the first time, a basic video editing program. Those novelties were more than offset by the program’s annoying tendency to freeze up and crash, earning it the dubious distinction of a #4 spot on PC World nagazine’s “25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” list.