i bought a pc before all the new ones came out during i guess about 2000-02ish. It came with 98 and upgrade to ME as soon as it was released. The only prob i had was it had no ME drivers for the scanner, but installing the scanner in 98, before the upgrade, would keep it installed and working. Prior to that I'd bought a used PC, really got fried on that deal, wound up having to buy a new 98 windows disc for $200, thing was, at that time it came with 90 days free tech support from M$, and MS tech support at that time was top notch. I wore them out on that, didn't do my long distance bill much good, but I considered it a grade A education ; )