The day is finally here for those of you waiting to ditch Microsoft Windows Vista for something other than having to downgrade to Windows XP. It’s been under development and was talked about almost minutes after Vista was launched.

My experience with Windows 7 has been pretty good. The interface is mostly like Vista, so it’s still taken a bit of getting used to in trying to find things and familiarize myself with the operating system. After spending so much time with Windows XP, there’s bound to be a learning adjustment there. I think it’s probably similar to the interface changes …read more

We’ve been running and testing Windows 7 on my wife’s Toshiba laptop for a few days now. She’s very happy with the install and the experience and hasn’t had any problems whatsoever.

She said there was just a little bit of adjustment for some of the user-interface changes,  but there was nothing real major for her that she used on a regular basis.
I still haven’t played around with it too much, but what I have I’ve liked. Things seem to be organized more intuitively over all. It’s still a slight adjustment after running with Windows XP for so many years. I …read more

Tonight I’m working on installing Windows 7 on my wife’s laptop. I’d originally thought that I’d have to do a completely clean install. Although I was willing to do that, I didn’t want to take the time to find all of her files and settings and back those up on an external drive so they wouldn’t be lost.

First I downloaded the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor just so I’d be aware of anything that might be important before I started. No real major issues to report. A warning about RAM size. RAM available was listed at just under 2GB, Microsoft recommends …read more

Just two years ago we saw the introduction of netbooks and it quickly became a buzzword and sales were growing rapidly to the surprise of vendors from Dell, HP, even Microsoft who quickly changed their policy on Windows XP.

The netbooks were initially loaded with Linux, then it became powerful and Windows based netbooks were sprouting everywhere. Netbooks started with 4 GB SSD, then jumped up to 8 GB SSD, 16 GB SSD, until conventional hard drives reaching from 80 GB until 160 GB hard drives were installed on these small machines. The memory started with 256 MB, 512 …read more

Today for Mother’s Day I thought I might upgrade my wife’s computer to have her try out the Windows 7 RC1 that’s now available. She’s been having some odd issues with her Vista installation randomly locking up, so I thought I’d install Windows 7 and see what she thought about the new operating system.

The problem though is that from what I read on the Windows 7 download site and installation instructions, it’s a complete fresh install of the OS. Anything on the hard drive is lost. The verbiage talked about having to backup everything and then reinstalling the programs you …read more

It seems Microsoft still missed one lesson it should have learned from Vista. The new Windows 7 operating system will be available in six different versions when it’s released. Microsoft will still release all of them on a single media disc though so that when you realize you got the wrong version you really needed it shouldn’t be too hard to upgrade to the next one.

Windows 7 Starter Edition
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Ultimate

Microsoft says most home users should probably go with the Windows 7 Home Premium version and business users will more …read more

You don’t like Vista? Still happy with Windows XP and wish things had never changed? A bit uncertain on whether or not Windows 7 will be the answer to all of your problems? You’ve heard it all before right? But if you upgrade or purchase a new computer with Windows 7 what if you don’t like it? What will be your options then? According to this article on Slashdot you might still be able to downgrade to Windows XP.
What will you do? From what I can tell so far I’ll probably upgrade happily to Windows 7 if I don’t upgrade …read more

SSH is one communication protocol that is used to access remote systems all the time. Short for “Secure Shell”, SSH provides a secure channel for data exchange, unlike Telnet and other insecure remote shells. Telnet, e.g., transmits all data including passwords in plain text.
For a system A to connect to a remote system B through SSH, A needs a SSH client (like PuTTY for Windows) and B needs a SSHD server running all the time so as to accept incoming connections.
SSH is a proprietary software offered by SSH Communications Security, and as an alternative the open source version OpenSSH is …read more

Microsoft has done it again. After six Windows Vista editions, now it has decided to continue with six Windows 7 editions. The editions are going to be called Home Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate.
The list differs at one item from Windows Vista: Business became Professional. Is it because Windows Vista didn’t do good business, Business edition or otherwise, and because Windows XP Professional did?
I am disappointed.
The Home Starter edition is supposedly designed especially for netbooks. One of the edition’s stark defining startling features is that not more than 3 applications can be run simultaneously. Duh! Already …read more

I’ve realized that my last Tech Channel Roundup was nearly a month ago and I’m guilty of it. So, bear with me as I overload you with a number of interesting links that I found in some of the sister blogs.
Milo discovered a product especially useful for enterprises of all sizes called Nightwatchman, a good news that Microsoft didn’t lay off anybody in the Vista team. I knew that they didn’t touch the Silverlight team, but frankly I’m surprised about this because Vista hasn’t been very profitable to Microsoft. Or has it? One bad news is the Windows 7 minimum …read more