Tag: Windows 7

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Win7… Later

Well, I’m glad I have another 500GB hard drive coming in for dual boot installation of Win7 beta on my 64-bit “hog,” because the two low-spec offline (not in current use) comps were… a ta too low-spec for the 32-bit install. Well, that and the fact that neither could really use the dual channel memory I had available to boost them into “maybe” range.

Sooo, next week. A dual boot system to test Win7 against Ubuntu 8.10 on an AMD dual core with (too many) GiB of RAM and a (ridiculously over-powered for text and typical graphics) nice vidcard, etc. Not bleeding edge, but easily powerful enough to have run Vista had I wanted to.

Mini-micro-nano-update: First reports from Fedex had the hard drive coming in on Saturday the 7th. Nope. Updated this afternoon to Tuesday the 10th. ‘s’all right, though, because I have to try to do some remote system management for a client this weekend. It’ll be interesting, to say the least…

Oh, and the system I’m writing this post from? One of those underpowered computers (old 700Mhz slot 1 P-III) that I popped a bare 80GB hard drive into. Sure, I was only able to scrounge up 256MB of the antiquated memory it uses, but it’s running as well as most computers running XP with 2-4X the memory. Oh, and the hard drive? It was a… problem loading the Win7 DVD onto, because the antiquated motherboard can’t recognize anything larger than a 30Gb drive. *heh*.

So, how’s this system working so well? Puppy Linux. Booted from the CD. Loaded GPartEd and found and partitioned the drive. Loaded Puppy Linux onto it, configured GRUB and… good to go.

Slick OS.

BTW, the Puppy Linux live CD is a very cool troubleshooting tool all by its lonesome. Unlike the “bad old days” of live CDs, once the OS is loaded from the CD, it runs in memory, and when apps are loaded from the CD, they’re loaded and run in memory. Browsers are as close to “instant on” as can be imagined, for example.

But, as a tool for rescuing files from a non-bootable Windows system, a Puppy live CD is the first thing in my bag of tricks, because it reads just about any file system out there. Boot the CD, mount the unbootable drive and start hauling files off to a flash drive or burn ’em to optical media or transfer ’em to another hard drive. If a drive is too trashed for that, then I’ll dig out the data recovery tools.

Oh, and If you decide to use Puppy Linux on a regular basis, installing it to the hard drive is a task that approaches the trivial. Configuring the GRUB bootloader is a tad more messy, but not by much. But one can get almost the entire benefit of installing Puppy to the hard drive by simply installing all the Puppy boot files (as well as the config files and saved sessions–including software installs) to the hard drive and just using the bootloader on the CD. Leaves your original OS untouched and doesn’t even mess with your OS’s bootloader that way.

Just not too shabby. And the Puppy community seems to breed new Puppy versions like crazy. From a ChurchPup, for those who want loads of Christian Bible study and related apps, to multiple Puppy distros aimed specifically at the Asus eeepc, there’re loads of offerings.

Puppy Linux. G’wan, adopt a puppy.

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New Line-up for Windows 7

Mary Jo Foley has a brief rundown of the proposed lineup for Windows 7. It’s not all bad news…

And Ed Bott gives a few more details about what the proposed features for the different Win7 versions are. If we do any Win7 here at twc central at all at all (and yes, I plan to install at least Win7 beta 32-bit within a week–and likely the 64-bit version a week after–again, if all goes as planned), I see two, or even three, different versions as being of potential worth:

Windows 7 Home Premium – This is the successor to Windows Vista Home Premium, and Microsoft expects it to be the most common edition sold, the standard for virtually all consumer PCs. It includes the Aero interface with its Windows 7 enhancements, plus Windows Media Center, DVD playback support, and multi-touch and handwriting features. I’m also told (but can’t yet confirm) that image-based backup is included in this edition for the first time.

If I decide not to go with LinuxMCE or something similar on the HTPC I plan on installing this year, this would be worth looking at for that application.

Windows 7 Professional – This edition drops the Business label used in Windows Vista and goes back to the old XP-era name, presumably to give XP users more comfort in their upgrade decision. Unlike Vista Business, this edition contains all features in the Home Premium edition, including Media Center. For the extra cost, you get more traditional business features like the ability to join a Windows domain, group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities, network-based backup features, and support for the Encrypting file system.

Group policy management tools. I liked the group policy management console (add-on for workstation users, built-in for server ver.) in Win2K, and even better in Server 2003 and XP (not available for Home ver). I was disappointed that the tool wasn’t included with Vista Premium (although Ultimate users had it included, of course), so that group policy management had to be done with Registry edits. So, group policy console functions included: good. Network based backup features built in? A plus. I’d have to see what pricing is like though, because the additional features mentioned here that I’d want on a twc central computer can all be duped with free add-ons from third parties.

And the “maybe” candidate? Well, Windows 7 “Starter Edition” (supposed to be available as an OEM only, but that’s how I usually buy Windows licenses anyway) might have some usefulness in older equipment, but since the beta that’s available now seems to install on some low-spec hardware, even this might not be needed around here–not that any of these versions are needed, just that some may turn out to be useful.

We’ll see. Maybe this version of Windows will appeal to me more than XP and Vista (2003 Server and Windows Home Server were pretty nice. Haven’t used/been directly exposed to 2008 Server; that’s one of the very few Windows versions I’ve had no exposure to, though what I’ve read/heard about it has been, on balance, very good).

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A-Pirating We Will Go?

No, not the Somali pirating that’s lately gained some notoriety. Software pirating-ish, sorta, kinda not quite.

When Me$$y$oft gave away demo/”preview” copies of Windows 7 alpha at WINHEC the other day, “Some one made the sketch his own” as it were, and almost immediately iso files (in torrents) were sprouting up all over the web.

OK, so I’m downloading one of ’em now. Of course, as I understand it, the thing has a 30-day kill switch and is designed to be a trial, so while I may be violating some law’s letter (I haven’t actually checked the nitty gritty on the licensing), I may actually be observing the spirit of the law better than those who stick to its letter. *huh*? The spirit of copyright law is, “Do no monetary harm to the copyright holder and do not harm the copyright holder by making unauthorized changes to his work.”Heck, I may (may) actually do Me$$y$oft some good if its claims for Windows 7 pan out by giving it a positive review.

Caveats: if the torrent fails, I’ll bail on checking out/reviewing Win7. AND, even if the torrent succeeds, this is a very, very early release and may be too buggy for even a fair VM tryout. VM? Yep. You don’t expect I’d hazard a REAL machine with an alpha-release OS, do you? *heh* Anywho, here’re a couple of graphics to whet your appetite:

BTW, while I don’t usually try out pre-release OSes, because I just don’t like “sacrificing” a working machine for the task, VMs are giving me a LOT of flexibility there. Using up a lot of hard drive space, too, but that’s what large hard drives were made for, eh? (Still, I may have to buy a couple of nice big drives somewhere soon down the road, but with 500GiB drives for $50 that probably won’t be that big a deal. Need spares, anyway.)

Also note another Very Good Reason to try this iso out in a VM:

No-one yet knows if any malware has been injected into the ISO, so anyone downloading it will surely be hoping that is not the case.

Consider yourself warned.