SHRAPNEL OFF THE WALL

Windows 7 Ultimate

This post is from the IBM Netvista to prove that Windows 7 can operate on the rickety-old computers as long as the hardware requirements are met. I did confirm before this post that the Windows Ultimate starts up fast and opens files with a snap. It still does not have a mailbox configure, though, thank God for this. Nothing here that Norton Anti-spam can mangle.

I tried loading the Starcraft game on this pc. It opened up well with the others that have the Windows 7 home. This desktop, however, gave me a rude message in that, “You need a 1.5 Gb for this game, dummy, you only have 1.0 Gb.”

After a while, though, I noticed that 16 updates from Microsoft came in, plus one Flash Player 10.1 upgrade from Adobe.

So I tried loading the game on the XP pro and it went well with LG Flatron W2453V monitor that produced more color on the screen than the Dell.

Anyway, the Staples stores are now selling refurbished old computers at good prices, knowing that old desktops can run Windows 7.

And, obviously, the Wordpress blog program.

Windows 7 Ultimate, the second

Windows 7 Ultimate, the second—-PROGRAMS

 It is getting clearer to me the reason for the multiple shelves and cabinets for the files on Windows 7. A file can now be opened in more ways than one. Moreover, a file can be processed in more ways than one. This arrangement becomes very helpful when the user is stuck on a procedure and is looking for a way out, or is looking to connect to a file or program. Since a program or a file can be accessed in several ways, the user does not have to close the operation he is in to get to another particular file or program. This is analogous to a driver who lost his way to Baclaran. Instead of turning around to pick up the road that he knows, he simply turns towards another direction or another route. This provides the user with OPTIONS—-no turning back, just go ahead, as if he was under a GPS voice direction. Now this arrangement may not be that favorable to the old users of Windows XP who have already burnt in their minds the way towards a file and the program to activate it. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks easily. Old dogs will whine and whimper and protest. I do protest, but I guess I have to burn myself a newer route towards that Record Now program. I must learn that there are OPTIONS open at almost any part of an operation.

 While we are on the subject of Record Now, let me explain what this is. This is a program to butn  files on a cd or dvd blank disk. It came as an integral part of the IBM OEM software, and was called IBM Record Now, actually made by Veritas. When the Sony dvd drives arrived, this Record Now was adopted to run its burning program controlled by what is called PX engine. This was made by Sonic.  It eased out the IBM Record Now and updated it to what is the most widely used burning engine, the Record Now 6.7. It never failed the burn.

 Comes now Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) and the Record Now failed to initialize even after the Windows Easy Transfer procedure. Transferring the files by external hard drive also failed to make it work. The only way the transfers would work is by reloading it via back-up restoration. But the .bkf backup program will not work on Windows 7 restore program, so a complete reload via disk will have to do. Alas, a Record Now 6.7 disk is non-existent.

 Painstakingly, I had to search my archives to the px.dll and the px engine zip file to load it on the Windows 7. Still no go. But good’ol Microsoft Support, they made it go the next day. It appears every program that is to be loaded to Windows 7 has to be processed in the Registry, too.

 Now, the Registry in Windows 7 cannot be reached by the earlier version of Start/Run/regedit, not anymore. But I must find this out. The Registry is where some particular OS shenanigans are devised.(heheheheh)

The Windows 7 programs, or those that I have encountered so far are not user friendly. The .pps file extension programs (like the Sunrise_Sunset.pps) does not open up with an autorun of sound and show. It opens up in .ppt. which is merely a Microsoft Powerpoint work area.  The Windows side by side command does not tile the folders vertically. Drag and drop by this method is non-existent. I can, however, drag a file and just point the cursor to a folder and the file is copied there as if dragged and dropped.

 The Dell Studio XPS Windows 7 Home Premium specializes in media so it incorporates a Cyberlink PowerDvd DX which is a mere stripped down player of PowerDvd. But it plays a blu-ray movie and HD videos. The HP Windows 7 Home Premium specializes in anime and games and the drive it has also specializes in fast refresh. Good for STARCRAFT playing. Also downloading shareware movies.

 I searched the windows system 32 for the command prompt program and I found it. This is the MS DOS program which I use to create my lotto (ehem) programs in Basic. The CMD feature is the first thing I look for in any new OS version of Windows!

 But I still bewail the fact that my Adobe Creative Suite could not be transferred to Windows 7. The software asks to be uninstalled first and then reloaded again. This I did already but the program insists that the Suite has to be uninstalled first. This means that I just cannot give up my Windows XP Pro upon which my second Adobe Creative Suite thrives.

 A funny thing about this Adobe company—when its programs run on my computer, it seems as if they have taken over the computer and that Microsoft is nowhere in sight.

Windows 7 Ultimate

Windows 7 Ultimate

I am not wont to write product reviews if I were only constrained to say what I like about a particular product.  Neither would I do this if I will be required to say only what I do not like of a certain product. I feel more gratified about myself were I to write what is good and what is bad about the product. More so if I can provide a comparison with other similar products in the market.

People who write reviews that contain only what they feel for the product are unfair. More so if they are paid to do this. They must be able to compare and contrast between products if only to cover a lot of the situations obtaining in the consumer world. Otherwise, the public would not really know what they are writing about.

 The issue nowadays is whether Microsoft is telling the truth about their new computer operating system, the Windows 7.  Smarting from the public repugnance of the OS predecessor Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the Windows 7 with such publicity and concern for public opinion that the OS actually slid in easily on the customers’ approval. Of course, the paying customers were also hungry for another operating system to replace the Windows Vista, unmindful of the fact that the Windows 7 is merely a modified, streamlined Windows Vista. What is Microsoft up to is the question to ask.

 If one were to buy a new computer today, it will advertently have an OS which is Windows 7, simply because there is nothing else which is more convenient to use other than Windows. In fact, the one who buys a new computer loaded with Windows 7 is much better off than the one who would upgrade their existing computers to Windows 7.

 But there are more people in the world who would upgrade rather than buy a new one. That is, if they really need another one and if they can afford another one. I myself prefer upgrading than buying a new pc. But I did buy one, a Dell, and another, an HP, just to settle my curiosity and to see whether Microsoft is telling the truth about Windows 7.

 But still I did the upgrade just to determine exactly which problems may arise in the process. Now comes the very important procedure of transferring the files from the old XP computer to the upgraded Windows 7 computer. Microsoft recommends using the Windows Easy Transfer method using an external hard drive. The files are copied to the external drive and then they are automatically reloaded to the computer after the Windows 7 upgrade is finished. This is easy, except the Windows Easy Transfer selects what files it is to collect and transfer. Guess what, it ignored about two-thirds of my program files and chose to transfer those that began with Windows, like Windows Media Player, Windows Encoder, etc; and afterwards gave a hint that I should transfer the rest of the files myself by reloading the programs.

 By the way, I chose as my test computer the oldest one I had which passed the Upgrade Advisor—-an IBM Netvista with 1 Gb ram and which I successfully upgraded from 40Gb to 80 Gb and then to 500 Gb hard disk capacity. It has a Sound Blaster 24 bit sound card and an ATI video card. I expected this pc to provide me with problems as I upgrade to Windows 7 ULTIMATE.  I chose this top-of-the-line version because I would like to know whether an XP OS can run on the same computer loaded with a Windows 7, a feature which only the top-of-the line Ultimate is able to do. My trials say it does but it is a little more complicated to explain how this is done. My suggestion is that if the very simple instructions from the Microsoft Download website still confuses you, get this book—“Switching to Microsoft Windows 7” —-the painless way to upgrade from Windows XP or Vista. This paperback by Elna Tymes and Charles Prael covers a lot of situations that Microsoft did not document.

 The first procedure that I tried was creating a second partition on the 500 GB drive and loaded the system on the empty drive and this was automatically renamed the “C” drive.

Now I have two partitions, one loaded with Windows 7 Ultimate, and the other still has the Windows XP Pro. Upon startup, the bios prods you to choose which operating system you want to open. This went okay for a time until I deleted something from one of the drives. It seems one partition still affects the other because when I deleted something from the System 32, the whole caboodle went down.

 Problems on startup are “skillfully” fixed by the Windows 7 software, from cd/rom  drive strappings to sound and graphic settings. The Recovery and Restore programs are better contrived than the XP Pro, although if a problem is insurmountable, the Ultimate just gives up and recycles on the same spot or just stands still with a blank stare. The XP Pro bypasses an insurmountable problem and keeps up a dialogue to lead you to the bios as a last resort.

While I had the Netvista testing the Ultimate, I had the Intellistation M Pro desktop running beside it with the XP Pro. This arrangement provided me with bases for comparison of the operating systems. Both are IBM desktops with IBM bios.

 The Netvista has a very quick startup and it opens files with a snap.  Even though it has only 1 Gb ram as against the 2 Gb of the M Pro; and 2 Ghz speed as against 3.4 Ghz of the M Pro, it kept up the pace. It had nothing, however, of the IBM delay (or buffer) to its executions in such a way that when a mistake is done on the keyboard, there is no correcting it. The mistake just goes through the consequences. The M Pro, however, simply isolates the mistake and refrains from executing it.

 The files of the Netvista is neatly organized and categories are well classified. Compared to the M Pro, the Netvista has more shelves and cabinets for each category. However, I find it easier to locate a file in the M Pro, which has fewer shelves, for the simple reason that it is in that one cabinet and not anywhere else.

 The Netvista was upgraded from XP Pro to the Windows 7 Ultimate, but it never did exhibit the hangups and crashes the way it is doing now after the upgrade, probably because the Ultimate OS is so sensitive to anything that is not in order, like a loose adapter or connector somewhere, that it refuses to budge anytime it senses that something is amiss. The XP Pro, having a delay time, ignores the problem and just bypasses it or beeps and beeps until the problem is aright.

 (To be continued)