Of installing Windows 7 ... in a snap !

This week, I had a call for a person with a laptop running Vista, complaining of errors and slow response time.

I first removed openoffice (he had office 2007 installed) , two or three Internet brower, a lot of downloaded tools... His toshiba was still slow. I then decided to clean registry and HD (thanks to ccleaner) then decided to defrag and to restart. The computer was still so slow and messy that I decided to update all drivers from Toshiba support website to the last Vista release...Nothing better !

I then suggested Seven and he agreed , despite the additionnal cost : a purchase scandal , he said... I agreed , but he did not want to switch to Ubuntu.

So Yesterday it was time to move to MS Windows Seven. I decided to format c: drive and start from scratch as I usually do on reinstalling... after all needed backups of course.

What a shock for me : the installation including harddrive format in less than an hour AND WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONNAL DRIVER TO INSTALL !!! I had previously downloaded all wifi and ethernet drivers for this laptop and never used it !
Sound = ok , Screen = ok, wifi enabled = ok, wireless Mouse and keyboard = ok
no error or question in the tab to manage drivers !



Only two restart !



For the very first time of my IT experience in twenty years :

Thank you Microsoft ! 

This time, wuth windows Seven, 

it seems to me you've done a great and professionnal job !

PS : If I have enough time , I might spend time to setup a seven desltop for my company and test there all XP programs they're using...

Of being lucky to work for mid-sized company...

• As a IT addict I'm on the process of moving my personnal computer at home from MS Windows XP to Windows 7... I'll assume the consequences !

• Due to the mass marketing on this product from Microsoft, I have some private clients requesting - and insisting -to come in order to switch toward this new system... I'll not complain : they'll have a backup of their data made by me , and by reformating the computer from scratch , they'll feel to have a faster computer... and they'll pay me !

• On my main job activity I 'll not . Why ? because I'm lucky enough working for a midsize company which is not rich enough to jump immediately on every new blinking solution ! That's said, I'll do my way : setup one computer with all application; test them all; chose one   test user  and work with him on this new setup; and IF SUCCESS, we'll plan to implement it slowly...  until then the company will not spend a cent , will not have lost data, end user will not be disturbed... My point of view will remains " better to have a little old system that works , than jumping on the unknown".
  

 My key goal about Windows 7 for now ? convince all requester (from enduser to managers) that it has to be done with methode and not in emergency, despite the internet and media buzz !

What do you think of my position ?

Of long term backup...

Last week-end I was lucky enough to have a conference from a forest admin here in france and he pointed a curious fact : to manage our forest we have readable and valuable information (on papers, sometime only painted !) around 200 years old... but we are unabled to read data only 15 years old, since computers are used to manage this forest !

We , IT guys, are all aware of the backups necessity. The best practice of keeping backups in safe area, in at least two location and to try full restore from time to time. OK with that ?

Who tried to restore data only 5 years old ? then 15 years old or more ??

Some cloud solutions appearing now (Amazon S3) ; other SAN with fiber chanel ; they are only answering the technological question of today...what about in the future ?


... but in some years , how will we recover data from there ? Once software and systems will be updated... Should we all keep a paper version of every file ?

How do you plan to manage long term backups ?