Installing Windows 7 on vista.

Vista was getting to be more and more of a pain. Crashing more often, windows defender zombies trying to come back from the grave after I have repeatedly tried to disable it, and after 7 years of virus free operation in the last few weeks inundated with viruses so I was forced to run zone alarm, which was incredibly annoying in new ways I could only have dreamed of before.



I went to costco and bought windows 7 "family pack" 3 licences for 179.99. Apparently the local store "Computer Angels" can also get it for that price (I imagine by ordering), but Futureshop and Office Depot didn't have the family pack and could only offer the upgrade for $129 each computer. Walmart was around 132 or something. Did some online research and found that Amazon is offering a student version upgrade for $39.99 US so thats the cheapest Ive seen yet.



First off, it seemed to take about 2 hours. What a computer needs to do for 2 hours when its processing and RAM runs at the speed of light is mind numbing. How far could you send some data at 2 hours travelling at the speed of light? Around 2,160,000,000 KM.



So after my data had managed to travel 2 billion kilometers or to the Sun and back around 7 times, the OS was finally installed.



In general, first impressions are its clean, fast, and impressively remembered almost all of my settings. It got all my bookmarks right and most of my cookies/filled in forms correct, kept all my installed programs in tact, and has all my desktop mess preserved exactly as I had it in Vista. Very impressed with this, its the best OS install I have ever experienced, and Ive been installing or attempting to install dozens of them for years on Mac, Linux and all the Windows versions.



Curiously it did get a few things wrong, the dual monitor positions were switched even though it preserved the background picture, and all my program shortcut icons were gone from the "taskbar" which seems to work differently - more like OSX does.



Some of the programs I run prompt the "are you sure you want to do what you just told me to do with 6 different actions" crap, and that did happen ONCE, but thankfully you can shut that up immediately by selecting "change when you see these notices" pushing an easy to use slider down to the bottom. Presto, no more "cancel or allow" garbage which has been the bane of my existence with Vista.



Windows IE 8 so far is snappy and intuitive. Enjoying it so far.



Another curiosity is Windows 7 seems to have eaten Windows Movie Maker. Its completely gone and there appears to be no Windows 7 version of it available in any of the Microsoft packs. I actually preferred it to "iMovie" because its much easier to edit the soundtrack independently of the video clips, plus the transitions and overlays had more options. Thats a disappointment, but I'll keep vista running on another box so I can still access it if I need it.



It seemed to find the other computers on the network faster than before, which is nice.



Another pleasant suprise was I was able to share my DVD drive on my network on the recently installed Windows 7 desktop over to my Sony VGN-P530CH, which doesnt have a DVD drive. In fact, I'm typing this part of the blog on that computer with Windows 7 on it. Very impressed, I've never heard of installing an OS across a network. It took a bit longer to install on the netbook but again, all my settings including the misc positions of my various icons are retained, almost as if the OS hadnt really changed. Even Firefox's previous session survived the OS change.

Hooking up to windows live I managed to quickly retrieve windows movie maker and mail, albeit somewhat less functional than the vista versions. Probably a temporary situation but so many web based apps are coming along that do much more like aviary.com so its not a huge deal.

Next up for me will likely be looking at a bamboo tablet to take advantage of the multitouch features.

So far, very happy with Windows 7, seems like Microsoft has finally gotten it right. If they were able to make 17 billion dollars in profit after launching a "failed" operating system, I shudder to think how much money they will post as profit end of 2010.

Thanks for reading, hope this was useful.

I was contacted by facebook legal, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt

I run a small online community website called "FacesForFilms.com". Until recently we were called "FilmFaceBook.com" and once we reached around 1500 members, I was contacted by a facebook lawyer to stop infringing on their brand. Apparently I was damaging their business by supposedly causing confusion.

As it happened, I had just purchased 20 shirts and several posters with "filmfacebook.com" on them out of my own pocket. The site is a volunteer effort that I maintain to help the local film community.

Not wishing to have any dispute with arguably the largest web based corporation on the planet, I quickly complied with their request. Facebook, rumored to be partially funded by the US Dept. of Defence, is not an organization to be trifled with.

So, I changed the name of our little online community as fast as I could think of a new name and register it, and all is well. The lawyer said they would send me a t-shirt, and it just arrived. It has an FB logo on the front and on the back it says "I WAS CONTACTED BY FACEBOOK LEGAL, AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT"
So I did lose about $300 in the various branded things, but at least I got a laugh out of it.

Cheers to facebook for having a sense of humor. I certainly could have done a whole lot worse.