The PC Informant » Windows 7

Windows Start-up & Shutdown Sounds from Windows 3.1 on up

Vic Laurie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:41:49 +0000

It seems that people will collect almost anything. Vince Bognot has put together Windows Start-up and Shutdown Sounds from Windows 3.1 to Windows 7. I am not sure who cares but here is his collection:

Via the Windows Club

Scrap files scrapped

Vic Laurie — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:59:22 +0000

Windows is a complicated operating system and has many properties and features that most PC users are unaware of. One of the odder and lesser known features in Windows 98/XP was something called a scrap file. I wrote about scrap files some years ago in connection with their use by virus writers. I visit the subject again to note that, beginning with Vista, Windows no longer supports scrap files.

What were scrap files supposed to do? They were intended as a kind of handy way to copy a small part of a document onto the desktop where it could be kept and then used in another file. Only a few applications, mostly Microsoft Office, supported this function, however, and very few PC users even knew about it.

To see how a scrap file works in Windows XP, open a Word document. Then highlight some text and use the mouse to drag the highlighted material onto the desktop. A new file will appear. Double-click the file and a Word document containing the text will open. Or drag the scrap file and drop it into an open Word document and the text will appear in the Word document. With a slightly different procedure, images can also be manipulated. In that case, however, you need to use a right-click drag and make a selection from the context menu.

Because of backward compatibility considerations, Microsoft doesn’t often drop a Windows feature. But scrap files were little known or used and had some security issues so this feature was omitted from Vista and 7.

Windows 7 borrowed from the Mac?

Vic Laurie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:52:43 +0000

A small ruckus broke out when Simon Aldous, partner group manager at Microsoft, acknowledged that the design of Windows 7 had drawn on some inspiration from the Mac. In an interview at PCR, Aldous said:

One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.

Redmond was not pleased. Aldous was quickly slapped down by a Microsoft repudiation of his remarks. Brandon LeBlanc, a company spokesman wrote:

An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.

I admire Aldous’s candor, but I think his career path at Microsoft just took a new direction.

Fixing Windows update problems

Vic Laurie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:11:23 +0000

For one reason or the other, it sometimes happens that a file or a Registry entry gets corrupted in one of the never-ending Windows updates. In that case, it often becomes impossible to carry out updates without getting error messages. The problems are common enough that Microsoft has come up with a tool to fix them. Go to this Microsoft link to get instructions and to download the fix.

Customize your icons

Vic Laurie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:11:34 +0000

Many Windows users are unaware that they are not stuck with the default set of icons that comes with their setup. In fact, it is quite easy to edit or replace the existing icons. Some years ago I wrote an article on how to customize your icons. Why should all your folder icons be the same bland vanilla symbol? Add color and design to your desktop. In fact, Windows comes with a selection of icons. You can also download libraries of icons or create your own.

My original article discusses how to change icons for Windows XP and where to get some extensive selections of new icons as well as free software for editing or even creating icons. Windows Vista/7 have similar procedures.

For folder icons, right-click a folder and choose “Properties”. Then click the “Customize” tab. The dialog box (shown below) will contain a button “Change Icon”. Click this and the procedure is then similar to what is outlined in the XP article.

Shortcut icons are also easily changed in Windows Vista/7 by a procedure very similar to that given for Windows XP. Right-click, open the properties dialog, and click the button “Change Icon”.

Here are some places where you can download icons:

How to pay less for Windows 7

Vic Laurie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:42:54 +0000

The retail price for Windows 7 is pretty steep. In fact, you can pay almost as much for some versions as the price of a new laptop. But there are legitimate ways to pay less. At ZDNet, Ed Bott has posted Seven perfectly legal ways to get Windows 7 cheap (or even free):

Only suckers pay retail.

If you’ve read any reviews of Windows 7, you’ve seen references to its price list, which ranges from $120 for a Home Premium upgrade to $320 for a fully licensed copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.

Well, guess what? You don’t have to pay that much. Most people have much better options available, if you know where to look. As I’ve detailed here, the best deals go to PC manufacturers, which you benefit from if you buy a new PC.

But there are plenty of other discounts available as well. In this post, I’ve researched deals in three separate categories: upgrade offers available to anyone, special deals just for students, and subscriptions intended for technical professionals and developers.

Is Windows 7 the last major release?

Vic Laurie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:34:18 +0000

Windows 7 is currently the focus of attention and will likely dominate the PC for a few years. But what about the future? At PCMag, technology industry analyst Tim Bajarin speculates about what comes after Windows 7:

So, Windows 7 does, in fact, matter. But for how long? At the moment, we live in a client/server world, so the operating system will likely matter on the enterprise level for some time. On the consumer level, the availability of thousands of Windows apps for PCs may well help this dominant OS live on as well. But as always, the world of technology is changing, and as such, it’s possible that this may be the last major version of Windows to come out.

He goes on to say:

With these factors in play, Win 7 may end up being the last major Windows release. Next time out, the OS may be much more focused on the cloud. Like Google’s Chrome, such a release would likely be free. Over the next few yeasr, Microsoft will have to figure out how to make money from cloud-based services, rather than from selling the operating system outright. In order to do this, the company will have to reinvent itself—something that will have to happen if Microsoft is going to survive and thrive in the future.

Another observer who wonders about the future of Windows is Christopher Dawson. Dawson provides IT for a school district and he writes an education blog at ZDNet. He compares Google and Microsoft:

I had a couple of very enlightening conversations with representatives from Microsoft and Google back-to-back on Friday. While our conversations were focused on their educational initiatives, some of which I’ll be featuring tomorrow on ZDNet Education, the more interesting aspects of the interviews actually related to their entirely different approaches to the Web, the cloud, and computing in general. These approaches, and the history behind them, beg the question, is it time for Microsoft to reinvent itself if it wants to avoid becoming the computing equivalent of fossil fuels?

How 32-bit software runs on 64-bit Windows

Vic Laurie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:58:08 +0000

When I took a look at the many PC offerings being rolled out for the advent of Windows 7, I was struck by how many of them were 64-bit systems. It’s a little geeky but an explanation of how Windows Vista/7 64-bit systems manage 32-bit software may interest some. TechSupportAlert has an overview of how it works.

Choosing between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows

Vic Laurie — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:17:19 +0000

So you think you might be buying one of the Windows 7 computers now being offered but are confused about choosing a 32-bit or 64-bit system. I have discussed this choice before but the prevalence of 64-bit systems on new Windows 7 machines prompts me to revisit the subject. Some factors to consider are given at MakeUseOf. Running 32-bit software on a 64-bit machine is the subject of the next post.

Windows 8

Vic Laurie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:17:13 +0000

Yes, I know. Windows 7 hasn’t even been released to general use yet (tomorrow’s the big day). Nonetheless, there is already talk about Windows 8. In fact, there are whole Web sites about Windows 8. We don’t actually know anything about Windows 8 but that doesn’t keep people from talking about it. For example, there is the site windows8news.com and also the site windows8center.com. Over at TechRadar, Mary Branscombe sums up what we know about Windows 8 so far (very little).