Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

« Older Entries

Back to School Series – Part 4 – Ask Holly – New Computer

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

Dear Holly,

My child is returning to school/starting university soon and needs a new computer for his/her work. What type of computer do you recommend we get them? And what programs should we buy to go with it?

Holly says:

We often get asked to recommend a computer for a new semester, but there are so many options we thought it would be good to give this general “recommedation” in this installment.

Type

The first question we get asked is what type to get.  We don’t mean brand, we mean either a desktop computer or a laptop.  Lots of people think laptops are the answer as they are mobile but we disagree in most cases.  In our experience (even with business users) most “mobile” users are far from it and usually have a laptop on their desk and never move it.

A desktop computer with similar specifications to a laptop is usually a lot cheaper, is less prone to problems (mainly because they can stay a lot cooler than a laptop) and are easier and cheaper to upgrade and remain current.

If you do need a laptop, we would still recommend going for a business class laptop than a “home” user one from the retail stores.  This is because the estimated life span of the two are greatly different and so the quality of components are not as good.  For example, most laptops look the same black plastic – but the business ones usually have a metal frame inside them to prevent damage when moved.  The hard drives and components (and usually the warranty) for a business laptop are designed to last at least 3 years, whereas a home laptop is usually designed to last a year.  So although they are more expensive, a business laptop is designed to last a lot longer.  A desktop has similar warranties but due to the few times they are moved they tend to last a lot longer (4 – 6 years).

Hardware

The main concerns for the student when it comes to the new computer is speed, storage and screen.  Firstly we would like to recommend that you do not buy a computer to play games on.  We are great believers for the right tools for the right job.  A computer is not for games – XBOX, Playstation etc. are for games and do a great job.

The two main factors affecting speed in a computer is the processor and memory.  A dual core processor will be faster than a single core.  The more memory the better.  Nowadays 2Gb is probably the minimum you would want and 4Gb would be good to last 3 or 4 years.  As strange as it may seem 2x 2Gb is faster than 1x 4Gb.  This is because they sit on “channel” and so the computer can split the work across two devices at the same time.

When it comes to storage – the more the better.  500Gb, 750Gb disks are relatively inexpensive.  You can always add to your storage with more disks, bigger disks or external disks if you want.

System

The biggest question we always get asked is should I get a Mac or a PC?  And our normal response for students is sometimes “Neither”.  Why?  Because there is a little known free system called Ubuntu that often is sufficient for a lot of people.  When we ask what the computer will be used for, most say “Email, the internet and school work – documents and presentations”.  Ubuntu does all of this built in.  It is a Linux based system with Firefox as the web browser and OpenOffice (remember our second installment) for the coursework.

For those who need more than this then it is a choice between a Mac and a Windows PC.  They both have pros and cons.  Don’t believe all the hype by either side.  A Mac will cost you more money for the same thing.  A Windows PC will often be harder to use and keep updated (this is the compromise – either let Mac do everything and control everything for you or let it be more open such as Windows, which means you lose control over what people are able to send to you).

A word of warning.  A Mac can get a virus.  Don’t be fooled by the ads and hype.  Although not targeted as much (yet) it can and has had viruses.  So please don’t get complacent and think you are safe from all viruses – buy an antivirus for Mac.

The other point to note is you have to have a program specially written for the operating system.  So you cannot use normal Microsoft Office on a Mac you have to use the Mac version.  This means that not every program has been written to use both systems so it will pay to check if there are any special programs you will need for your coursework before making your choice.

If there are no special programs needed or the programs are available on both systems, and there are no preference from the school or university course then it really is your choice.  Go to a store and try both types and see which you prefer.  The type and hardware recommendations above apply to both Mac’s and Windows PC’s alike.

Remember, once you have your new computer, you want to keep it updated and working correctly.  In which case you may be interested in our HomePak™ or CollegePak™

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Back to School, Best Practices, Computers, Software, Technology | No Comments »

Back to School Series – Part 3 – Docs/Office Webapps

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

In this third installment in our “Back to School” series we look at online storage and sharing of Microsoft Office documents.  Recently Microsoft have launched two sites where users can create, store and optionally share Microsoft documents for free.

Docs

http://docs.com allows Facebook users to create Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents online without having any of these programs. The advantage to this, other than no need to buy Microsoft Office, is that the documents are also stored online and so are secure. If your computer crashes you can still get to the document.  Also as it is online you can get to your document from anywhere you can access a computer and get onto the internet.

Once you create your document you can choose to share it with some or all of your facebook friends or you can choose “Everyone” which is everyone on Docs. You can also choose to allow some or all of your friends to be able to edit the document also.

Docs is still in its early stages and so is still missing some features. There is also a long waiting list to join (it took us about 4 weeks to be accepted) but be patient.

Office Web Apps

http://office.live.com was launched with Microsoft Office 2010. Much like Docs it also allows users to create Office documents (in this case Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) online without having to purchase the programs.  You do not use your Facebook account for Web Apps, instead you use your Windows Live ID (same as you would use for Hotmail, live mail, messenger etc.).  If you do not have one then it is free and easy to sign up for a Live ID.

Again, like the Docs site, your documents are stored on the site and not on your computer, allowing you access from any computer and also ensures they are safe if something should happen to your computer. Also, like Docs, you can choose to share certain documents with people, either your Live friends (from Messenger etc.) or by simply typing in an email address.  You can even create folders and share the whole folder with people.

In summary we think this is a great step by Microsoft.  We like and use both versions so we can share with different people.  Both sites have their pros and cons and both are in their infancy, so some patience is needed.  But these two coupled with OpenOffice should meet the needs of just about every student.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Back to School, Best Practices, Microsoft, Social Networking, Software | 1 Comment »

Back to School Series – Part 2 – OpenOffice

Friday, August 6th, 2010

This is the second installment in our “Back to School” series.  The first installment was on Microsoft Office, in which we mentioned the two versions – Home and Student ($149.99) and Office Professional Academic for university students ($79.99).

Our feature suite of programs in this installment are FREE!  No there is no catch.  They are free.  The suite is OpenOffice and can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org.  Open Office was developed by Sun (now owned by Oracle – both big Microsoft competitors in their own right).

Edition

Open Office comes in 1 edition and has the following programs in it:

Write

This is the word processing program and does many things that Microsoft Word does and some things better.  Open Office can also open Microsoft Word documents (.doc, .docx) and save a document as a Microsoft Word document (.doc). You can also quickly and easily publish your document as a PDF file for read only viewing and distribution to those without OpenOffice or Microsoft Office.

Calc

This is the spreadsheet program and does most of the same functions as Microsoft Excel. Similar to Write, Calc can open Microsoft Excel documents (.xls, .xlsx) and save documents into Microsoft Excel format (.xls). Again an easy publish to PDF can also be performed.

Impress

Impress is the equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint and creates outstanding presentations.  You can also create 2D and 3D drawings and share them not only via PDF but also HTML and Flash for websites and similar applications.

Draw

If you need a drawing and publishing program, similar to Microsoft Publisher, the Draw is the program for you. You can create simple drawings to complex plans, flowcharts, photorealistic images and much more.

Base

We are not sure how they came up with the name for this one. Unlike the other programs in the suite this is not intuitively named, however it is easy to use.  Base is the database program, similar to Microsoft Access. With Base you can create your own database or link to another one and create forms for input and reports for viewing results.

Other Information

As you can see, OpenOffice has the same programs as Microsoft Office but for no cost.  You can also open most Microsoft Office documents and save your documents in Microsoft Office formats.  You can also have both suites installed on your computer and they will not interfere with each other (we do this in the office).

All in all we feel that most students’ needs will be met with OpenOffice, but try it for yourself and if it doesn’t meet your needs then you can decide to upgrade to Microsoft Office and have not wasted any money.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Back to School, Best Practices, Software | No Comments »

Back to School Series – Part 1 – Microsoft Office

Friday, August 6th, 2010

In this our first of our “2010 Back to School” series we will be looking at Microsoft Office® 2010, which was released just a few weeks ago.

Editions

Microsoft Office is a suite of tools and comes in many editions.  For this series however, we will be concentrating on the Home and Student Edition and Office Professional Academic (more on how to buy this later).  This is the most basic and cheapest of all the editions but has all the programs needed for most students.

For those not familiar both editions come with the following programs:

Word

This is a program that lets you create professional looking documents and reports.  For most students this will be the main program used.  It has powerful editing features and rich media features. You can embed pictures and other items into your document as well as create different styles, colors and headings.

Excel

Used mainly for calculations and formulae, Excel is another very powerful spreadsheet program. Excel can also use data from other sources to create charts and graphs, which again are used a lot by students during their coursework. For more advanced users, Excel information and charts can be directly embedded into Word documents, allowing for fully detailed reports to be created.

PowerPoint

When you need to make a presentation to a group, then you need PowerPoint. This tool comes with many templates to create great presentations and you can embed just about anything into it (text, pictures, music, video etc.) and also create handouts or presenters notes. You can even email the final presentation to people without PowerPoint so they can run it on their computers.

OneNote

Do you carry around folders with cuttings of information for you next report? Or have a folder on your computer where you keep it all? Hard to manage isn’t it? Then you need OneNote. This allows you to collect, store and organize all your information in one place. You can add documents, web pages, websites and scanned images or even pdf files. All in one easy to use system.

Office Professional Academic also comes with the following  programs:

Outlook

This powerful email, calendar, contact and tasks program will keep you organized. You can get your school and other emails from many accounts in one easy to use program. Plan your schedule with you calendar and even keep up to date with tasks for your coursework.

Publisher

You can create professional quality publications, such as brochures, flyers, certificates and many other items. Like all the other Microsoft Office programs, other items can be embedded easily into the documents you create.

Access

Access is a small database program which will let you create, track and report on important information. This is useful to university students when they need to report on complex data and need simple to use forms and reports to input and display this data.

How to Buy?

You can purchase Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition from us, online from Microsoft or from most retail stores for $149.99. University students who wish to purchase Office Professional Academic (Office Professional is normally $499.99) for $79.99 have to buy online from Microsoft. To qualify you need an email address ending in .edu. Once you give that email address it will be verified by Microsoft and a link to purchase will be sent to you.

Updates

Like all programs it will need to be kept up to date. For those of you not using our HomePak™ we recommend you change from Windows Automatic Updates to Microsoft Automatic Updates. To do this just go to the Windows Update website and you will see a link to change to the Microsoft updates. This takes just a few seconds to complete.

Later in the series we will be showing you how to keep your important documents safe or backed up.  For those who do not wish to go to the expense of Microsoft Office, our next installment in the series will be of great interest to you – all the features of Microsoft Office but free of charge!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Back to School, Microsoft, Software | No Comments »

Backup and Cloud Storage

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Earlier in the month we wrote a blog about getting a new computer or fixing your old one if it breaks.  We mentioned the fact that you should back up your precious files and pictures so it is easier to move them and so you don’t lose them if something on your computer breaks.

We received a lot of questions from people about how they can do that and whether they should back up their home computers.  So we decided to write a blog about it, to let everyone know their options.

While most people think Backups and Cloud storage are for businesses, we also think that home users should use these for their own files too.  The solutions we cover here are really not meant for businesses, so if you are interested in solutions for your business then please contact us and we will be glad to help.  Even small businesses on a tight budget have greater needs than most home users and so we have plans to help you.

What is Cloud Storage and How Does it Differ From Backups?

A backup is a copy of the original file kept in a different location (preferably not on the same computer), which is sometimes compressed to save space.  The backup can then be (expanded and) restored to the original location or another location if something should happen to the original file (deleted, disk or computer broken or stolen, virus attack etc.).

Cloud Storage is using the internet to store your files, which is the same as storing them on someone elses computer.  An example of cloud storage is when you upload your pictures to flickr or Facebook.  There is now a copy on their computers and they back them up.  So if you do lose it on yours then you can get it back from them (though it may be a reduced size in this example).

How Do I Use Them and How Much Does It Cost?

Costs vary, but they start from FREE (we like that word!).

Lets start with backup.  Most computers have some sort of back up program built in.  You click it, start the wizard, tell it what you want to back up and how often (e.g. nightly) and where to store it and as long as your computer is on it will back them up.  We suggest you have a large enough second drive to hold your backups and keep a few (usually a weeks worth).  A portable hard drive is fairly inexpensive (less than $100) to hold all your data, or you may be able to share it with one or two computers in the house.  If you don’t have one then we suggest a USB stick (they can be 32Gb and getting bigger) and either copy the files over or use the backup program.

The reason we say another drive is so that if your computer breaks, is stolen or gets a virus then you have the files somewhere else where they can be recovered.  There is nothing more disheartening than us explaining to a customer that we cannot recover their family photos when a drive fails and they didn’t have them backed up.  Those moments in time are lost forever.

Another way is using online backups.  There are many companies including ourselves who provide this service for a small monthly fee.  This time you download their small backup program, configure it in much the same way (files, how often etc.) but this time you have to be connected to the internet and they send it to their servers for storage.  This is backup and cloud storage in one.  Now your files will be safe even if a disaster struck your home.

A word of warning about some of these company’s advertising.  When they tell you they have unlimited backups or storage, don’t get overexcited.  You can only upload so much data at a time over the internet.  Gigabytes of data takes days of non-stop sending from your computer and the next backup cannot start until that one finishes.  So take a step back and have it explained to you properly and don’t choose one company over another for unlimited data only.  It is just a marketing ploy.

The downside of these backups is they are only  backing up your file and not your full disk.  This usually makes little difference to the home user (but is critical for business use) but it means that if your computer fails and you have to replace or fix it and start again you will have to install Windows, all your programs, the online backup program if you used it and then restore your files – which can take a long time and then not be guaranteed to work.

There is another type of backup that takes an image of your disk and backs that up, meaning the full system.  It works in a similar way to the other backups but it is doing everything and not just the files.  Then your whole system can be restored including Windows, your programs, your desktop, favorites and everything else in one click.  We provide this type of backup for home users starting at $10 per month.

Whichever type of system you use you should always periodically check the state of the backups and do a temporary restore to make sure the file will work.  The number of backups we have seen that were never tested until they were actually needed only to find out there was a corruption and everything was lost is staggering.  All for the sake of a few minutes to check.  With the free backups on your computer it is hard to check.  With these online programs it should be easier.

With our system, because we image the whole disk we can perform two checks. First we can open the whole backup as another drive (e.g. F drive) on your computer and you can copy files over from it or just open them up as if they were on your main drive.  Secondly we can create a virtual copy of your computer on your computer or another computer to make sure the whole system works if needed.  Not bad for $10?

As we mentioned before, Cloud storage is similar and often goes hand in hand with backups.  There are a number of places, including Google that will allow you to upload files for no charge.  Other places will let you store and share certain types of files.  And if you have email hosted by these companies and have a lot of storage (e.g. Gmail will give you something like 2Gb of email) then send yourself your important files as attachments and store them in a folder on your email account.

For those students looking for places to store their school coursework etc. then look out for our blogs and next months newsletter.  This will focus on “Back to School” and one installment will be on storing and sharing those documents.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Backups and Disaster Recovery, Best Practices, Business, Computers, Hardware, Software | No Comments »

HTML 5 – Are you making the most of it?

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

HTMWhat? No idea what I am talking about? Should it bother you?  If you have a website for your business then the answer is a definite YES!

Without boring you unnecessarily, HTML is the language written for web browsers that display web pages.  It is pretty boring to look at (you can usually click on a web page and click View Source to see it) and you only see what the browser does with that source (that tells it the content, colors and how it is laid out).

HTML is also important for two other reasons.  First, for visually impaired people visiting your website then they don’t see the results they hear the HTML code that the browser has – so keep the source as clean as you can to make it easier for them.  Secondly, this is the stuff Google and the other search engines use to examine your content and place you in their results.  So again keep it clean to boost your ratings.

So if you have been using HTML for all these years why should you care about HTML 5?  Well it is revolutionary as far as writing websites go.  Even though most sites were using HTML4 it hadn’t changed too much over time and was not powerful enough to cope with modern websites.  For example, with old HTML if you wanted to put a box on your website so a person would put their email address in there and you sent them something, then there is no real HTML to do that and make sure they entered an email address not any old text.  So we had to rely on other measures.  Not with HTML5 we now have one!  And for Phones, and lots of other things.  And if you wanted to watch a movie, you had to install Flash, but you couldn’t in some corporations and locked down computers, and certainly not on your iPhone (we won’t bring that up again though).  With HTML 5 you can, with no plugins needed.

I hear you saying “Great! But my site works and does all that now so no need to change”.  Wrong.  And your web developer will probably tell you no too (because they haven’t learnt or understood it yet).  I bet the #1 topic about your website with your team at any point is “Search Engine Results”.  Whether it is Google, Yahoo, Bing or any of the others – you care a lot about where you are placed on the results pages.  Let me tell you that HTML 5 will boost those results, especially over non HTML 5, with a thing called Microdata.

The results of Microdata can be shown in the example below.  Please note these are made up examples and not actual real search results or links.

Without HTML5 a Google search would look similar to this (the standard results we see)

But the same page written in HTML5 with Microdata looks like this

Even if it didn’t get you a higher placement, if there were two results on a page – which would you choose to click on?  It isn’t a new language, it is enhancing your current site and taking advantage of new features available to web developers.

And if your web developer doesn’t know how to use HTML 5 or has never heard of it, don’t let them learn on your dime!  Ask them to show you real live websites they have written before they work on yours.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Marketing, Software, Web Design | No Comments »

More Talk, Less Cost for This Local Real Estate Office!

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
Remax Texas Heritage Logo

Remax Texas Heritage

RE/MAX Texas Heritage, in Bryan/College Station, recently upgraded their office telephone system with our help.

Their old system was a proprietary digital based system using analogue telephone lines (you know – the type you get from Verizon or AT&T that date back to Alexander Graham Bell) and special phones, all of which increased the cost of the system and increasing the number of lines or handsets when needed.

This old system was also limited by its storage, especially voicemails, and configuration of different routes.

John Byers and Brady Brittain, the two new owners of RE/MAX Texas Heritage, came to us to help solve their problem.

“We did not want to be restricted in what we could do with the new system now and in the future” said Brady.

John also had the vision of having their Agents be able to work from anywhere and still have access to the resources in the office. “I want to be able to allow our agents to be ‘Virtual Agents’ and work from anywhere where they can be connected to the office” he said.

The Solution

Given those requirements and the directive to also “cut costs” we looked at the old system and realized it was more cost effective to totally replace it.

Their new system was a Windows based IP PBX system, Cisco IP handsets, softphones for virtual agents and when mobile and Voice Over IP (VOIP) based telephone lines.

Under FCC regulations anyone is allowed to port their existing numbers from their old carrier to a new carrier, and our process makes it very simple – just a signed Local Number Port (LNP) authorization (a 1 page document) and a copy of the front page of your last bill, and we take care of the rest.

VOIP brings major cost savings to businesses like RE/MAX Texas Heritage. When switched over to VOIP most of our customers save in the region of 80% on their monthly bills!

How is this possible?

Well unlike a traditional phone line where one call means 1 physical wire, VOIP comes over your internet connection. Just as many users can view many web based applications at the same time over 1 internet connection, you can receive many VOIP calls at the same time over 1 internet connection.

As you don’t have to add physical wires each time then you won’t incur those extra monthly costs.

Also as no physical wires are involved you can have as many numbers as you want for little extra cost.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage can take 8 concurrent external calls on their system but has around 30 phone numbers – we will explain why in a minute.

Phone numbers (also known as DID’s) are $1 per month. And the VOIP lines start at $12.75 per month.  Compare that with analogue lines which average $50+ per month per line.  30 numbers would have cost them around $1,500 before they make a call! Compared to the (approximately) $200 per month they currently pay with VOIP, the savings soon add up.

Most of our customers also remark how “clear the line is compared to the old one” when we switch them over to VOIP, in the same way that CD’s and MP3’s are clearer than the old vinyl and tapes (remember those?) for music.

Additional Features

In addition to the cheaper, clearer calls, RE/MAX Texas Heritage was also able to make use of all the additional features that comes with the IP PBX.

They now have an unlimited amount of extensions, so they can add or remove extensions at any time. This is especially useful for setting up “dummy” extensions to be able to have more control over an incoming call and then forwarding it based on some rules you have (such as to a cell phone) without having to buy a physical phone.

There is also unlimited voicemail storage. As the PBX is Windows based (RE/MAX has theirs on a Windows 7 PC) then all storage is on a hard disk.  It is very easy and inexpensive to upgrade that disk or add a new one.

As it is Windows based, voicemail is an audio file which can be listened to on the phone, via a web browser or even emailed to the email address associated with the extension. This is great for RE/MAX Texas Heritage Agents, who can now get their voicemail as soon as a message is left, especially when not in the office.  Even on their cell phone!

The PBX also has a built in fax server. This receives a fax and converts it to a PDF and emails it to the extension’s email address. This is why RE/MAX Texas Heritage has those extra numbers and how they are the only Real Estate office in the area with “Virtual Agents”. Every agent has their own personal fax number – essential when dealing with contracts, offers and inspections all day – which has been configured by John and Brady to forward to their email address.

RE/MAX Texas Heritage also made use of the many different configurations of Digital Assistants, Ring Groups, Queues and dummy extensions that are available in their PBX system, not only for their Agents & Customers, but also for their Property Management side of the business. To provide the best emergency maintenance services (e.g. plumber) to the tenants of the properties they manage, the system will now route the tenant through to the correct maintenance person no matter what time of night it is so the emergency is dealt with immediately, without having to leave a message or call another number.

“We believe we are the only property management company in the area that offers this immediate ‘after-hours-direct-to-maintenance-contractor’ service” said John. “In situations when there is a water leak, or no electricity for the A/C with children in the house, time is critical for our tenants and this service saves valuable time”.

If you would like to read more about how RE/MAX Texas Heritage saved money and increased productivity through their new system then download our free eBook here. For more information on RE/MAX Texas Heritage or if you are looking to buy, sell or rent a property, call them on 979-846-4500. For more information on VOIP systems, call us on 979-985-5301 or visit our main site here

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Hardware, Software, Technology, VOIP | No Comments »

Microsoft To Release Out of Band Security Update to Internet Explorer

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Tomorrow Microsoft will be releasing an Out Of Band Security Update for their Internet Explorer web browser.  This will fix the recently disclosed Zero-Day flaw.

From their site announcing the update they say it addresses …

… a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 8 is unaffected by the vulnerability addressed in the advisory and we continue to encourage all customers to upgrade to this version to benefit from the improved security protection it offers.

We also recommend users upgrade to IE 8 or use another browser such as Google Chrome which is proving the be the most secure of them all so far.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Hackers, Microsoft, Software | 8 Comments »

Marketing Tip #224 – Music On Hold

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

For those of you with a PBX telephone system, what do your callers hear when they are put on hold?  The music that comes with it?  The radio? Something else?

Other than some legal broadcasting problems with playing some CD/MP3 or the radio, it is also not doing much for your business.

Consider some marketing or other promotions.  With most PBX’s you can easily record your own ad’s.  Our preferred PBX allows us to use wav files which we record on our computer and quickly upload it.  We can record and edit on our computer which allows us to fade in music in between brief current promotions. We change these regularly so that people don’t hear the same thing and that our promotions are current.

The bonus is that it is very cheap in todays economy and your callers are calling you for a reason.  We hope it is a good reason and so will be eager to hear your latest sales promotions, current offers or new product.  All for a few bucks and 30 minutes of your time.

Of course, you need a PBX system to do this, but they are very inexpensive and if you didn’t read our January blog about telephony savings then we recommend you go and read it now and save yourself some money and increase your marketing reach!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Best Practices, Business, Marketing, Software | 6 Comments »

Windows 7 – Should I upgrade?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

We get asked this question a lot. Some also ask if “Windows 7 isn’t just Windows Vista with a new Service Pack?”.  The answer to that question is no, it is more than that.

Windows 7 has a lot of the great things from both XP and Vista and a lot less of the annoying and work-hampering things that were introduced with Vista. Some people did not upgrade from XP, partly because they heard there were annoyances with Vista and partly because some of their applications just would not work with Vista, especially older legacy applications that a lot of small businesses still use.

The good news is that Windows 7 versions for business use comes with a new “XP Mode” built in.  XP Mode is a virtual pc built into your Windows 7 pc.  You can start XP mode which is like starting a second computer on your on (has its own window on your screen) and install your programs that work with XP only.  You do not need to buy an XP license as Windows 7 comes with one for you and you do not need to install it as it is pre-built for you (just as if you bought a new pc from the store).

Even better is that you can launch your XP only applications from your Windows 7 desktop and programs menu directly.

We have even set up XP mode (which is 32 bit) on Windows 7 64 bit computers (which take advantage of more memory and other resources only available to 64 bit machines) and loaded 32 bit only programs and drivers on there and made them work successfully.  One thing this scenario highlighted that some manufacturers (Adobe for one) need to address is licensing.  We were testing a 32 bit only printer driver on XP mode.  We needed to print from an adobe application that we had installed in 64 bit mode to do our work.  We then had to install it on our 32 bit XP mode machine on the same computer.  However Adobe complained that we had exceeded our licenses as it saw us using it twice – even though it was on the same physical machine.  There needs to be a way where you can have it running on the same hardware at the same time.

For current Vista users there is a much nicer user interface.  The task bar and quick launch bar (which we made extensive use of) have merged into one (similar to the Mac) which we like a lot.  In fact we have stopped using both the quick launch and the start menu in favor of the task bar.  Another great feature is the task bar hover preview.  When you hover over an icon on the task bar that has a window open but not the active window you get a preview (about 2inches square) of that window so you can choose if you want to switch to it or not.  You can also close that window without having to set it as the active window.  If you then hover over the preview window all the other windows will temporarily become minimized and you get the window that you are previewing as the active window without making it active.  As soon as you move away from the preview with your mouse then everything goes back to as it was. This is a huge productivity gain for us.  For example if a new email comes in I can hover over the outlook icon and then hover over the preview window which will show me my full size outlook window.  I can then read the subject and the first few lines of the email and if I don’t need to reply immediately then I take the mouse away from the preview window and all goes back to as it was before I decided to preview – so if I was halfway through writing something my cursor has not moved as I didn’t click away from it.

The other advantage to this preview is when you have multiple documents open for an application.  If for example I have 3 MS Word documents open then the Word icon in my task bar will show it as activated and will show it as having multiple active windows.  When I hover over the icon this time, all of the documents will show a preview each.  I can hover over each to read each one (handy if you are referring to them in another document or application), close one or more or switch to the correct one I am interested in.  That alone saves hours of work each month as we are often referring to multiple documents and emails when corresponding in various forms.

We find that Windows 7 is a lot less buggy than Vista. In fact we have never had a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) or a single problem with Windows 7 on all of our computers.  For laptops we also have found the start up time from hibernation is much faster.  And we are comparing apples with apples as we upgraded some of our computers with a clean install and others with just an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 – so it is the same hardware and applications running that were running under Vista.

We should point out that it is much better to do a clean install of Windows 7 than upgrade and we should point out that you can only upgrade from Vista.  XP owners will have to do a clean install.  Remember to migrate your user settings, documents and other files first and to also back up your PC in case something goes wrong in the upgrade.

Other features we like is the vast number of built in drivers for most peripherals – way more than XP or Vista.  There are very few (we have found none) printers and other peripherals that have not got a built in driver in Windows 7 so no more searching for lost disks or going online to the manufacturer’s site to try and find your printer driver.  This is how it should be – users should not have to go looking for drivers for their printers.

There are a number of people who always maintain that you should not upgrade your Microsoft OS until at least 2 service packs have been released.  We used to agree as there was a tendency for the OS to be released quickly and quality will come later.  Not so in Windows 7.  We have found it to be more stable than Vista (even on the latest Vista service pack) and have yet to have a problem.  So for those businesses who are unsure.  Our advice is to not hold back waiting for a service pack.  The main driver for your decision to upgrade should be the business benefits and the timing should be down to finances and least interference with day to day business.  As we said we recommend that a clean install is the preferred upgrade, and this takes time.  So the PC user will be without their computer while this is going on which will dictate the best time to interrupt their daily work.  When you scale this up to a large company with 100’s of computers this soon becomes a real planning nightmare.

In conclusion, we must give Microsoft some respect for listening to us users over time, especially after the Vista launch.  We think Windows 7 is THE best client operating system for businesses and most home users, and recommend all XP and Vista users upgrade.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Business, Microsoft, Software | No Comments »

« Older Entries