Yamaha Home TheaterThe Real Deal 183: All about Windows 7
CNET Download.com's Seth Rosenblatt joins the Real Deal to answer all your questions about Windows 7 so you can be prepared for October 22.
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Episode 183
1. What’s new?Home group
Aero peek, other UI tweaks
Device stage
WMP
2. What’s missing?
A stable browser
Well, a browser that’s fast. speed is more of a problem with IE than stability.
Performance
3. What’s better?
Sleep mode, UI, more fun customization options
More secure
Drivers
4. What’s worse?
5. Who should get it? Will it be on Netbooks?
Anybody who has Vista
Yes it will be on Netbooks
6. Licensing of an upgrade. This will be the first time some people have upgraded an OS. What do they need to know?
Step 1: Backup
Rafe: Don’t authorize until it’s solid
We have lots of questions about upgrade paths so let’s save that discussion for the email questions below. We’ll also take live calls about Win 7.
EMAIL QUESTIONS
***********How will the Windows 7 upgrade work for Vista users?********************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
I bought a new Gateway desktop in late July and I registered for my free windows 7 upgrade. How will this work. Will I get the entire OS disc or just an upgrade? How easy will it be to upgrade, I have windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. How long will it take to upgrade? Basicly tell me everything about upgrading to windows 7 from vista.
Thanks for the help,
Nathan Kottler
A: You will get an OS disk that is coded to be an upgrade version. But the whole OS is there. If you’re upgrading Home Premium 64 bit to Win 7 Home Premium, you can do it in place. Speed of upgrade will depend on speed of computer and hard drive and other factors. Allow 30 min at least, possibly more, depending. We’ll know more when the product hits wide distribution.
*************How will Windows 7 upgrade work for Windows 7 RC 1 users?******************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
Thanks so much for an awesome and fun podcast! I’m so glad you are
doing a Windows 7 episode because I and others need your help.
Just like many others I jumped on the bandwagon and installed the RC
version on my “production” machine amd have been loving it. Problem
though- now that it willbe end of lifed with the official launch I
will need to upgrade but msft says we will need to do a new install.??
There was a hack where you could upgrade from Beta to RC and
everything went fine – how can we do that for RC to official status.
Needing to do a clean install would stink amd I have some “one
install” program licenses that I want but don’t want to pay twice
for,etc. Any thoughts??
Thanks
Craig
A: MS was clear about the upgrade path from RC to Released. There isn’t one. Best bet for happy computing down the line is to bite the bullet and do a clear install. For program licenses, you’re going to have to examine them case by case, to see if uninstalling a program releases the license for future re-use, or what. In some cases you will be ok re-using a license. It depends on the software.
************When should I upgrade to Windows 7?*******************
Hey Guys,
I pre-ordered Windows 7 for an old XP machine back when it was only $50, and I am supposed to receive a free upgrade for the new PC I bought. My question is when should I actually switch over from Vista & XP to Windows 7? Is it just a matter of making sure that I have updated drivers, or is there some other milestone that I should be watching for?
Thanks,
Ben
Los Angeles, C.A.
On the new machine you should be fine. The older XP computer *should* be fine too, since Win 7 ships with a boatload of drivers. I upgraded a two-year-old homebuilt and it got everything by itself. But my advice would be to create an image backup first, just in case, or do what I do when I’m doing a major OS upgrade. Get a new HD and put the new OS on that. Then you have the older HD as a backup, and once you determine everything is fine, you can use it as extra storage if you need it, or as a backup drive.
Seth: You really need at least a gig of RAM, 20GB of HD. Use the MS eval utility. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1B544E90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en
************How I upgraded XP to 7 without issue*******************
Hello Real Deal,
Like the show great job educating people. I just installed Windows 7 Ultimate edition on my 4 year old HP Presario DV2000. Works great just wanted to clarify some confusions I have been reading on the Internet saying that you need a clean install to run Windows 7, which is totally a myth. All you need to do is partition your hard drive pop the DVD in, chose the advance option when the wizard runs and select the partition that’s empty.
My HP runs both win XP and 7, I can even run programs installed on my XP partition (if I really want to) just by locating the .exe file in Program Files.
PS: I even forgot to back up my files and nothing was affected.
Thanks
Prince
Good solution, but this isn’t technically an “upgrade.” I run Vista 64, Vista 32 (which I don’t use, I just keep is as a backup), and Win 7 RC. It’s kind of a mess but you’re right, if you have extra space you can do it this way. Once Win 7 arrives for me, though, I plan to retire the other partitions.
************How clean should my clean install be?*******************
Hey Tom and Rafe,
I'm going to do a fresh install of Win7 from the Win7 Release Candidate, as soon as my preorder ships.
I'm tempted to use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard (or whatever it's called) as a convenient shortcut during the install.
(For me, I'm running Win7 on my tabletPC, and I really don't want to lose the handwriting recognition files.)
But the superstitious part of my believes that the "cleanest" way to do a clean install is to NOT carry anything over from the prior setup, including settings. Am I being conservative or paranoid?
Thanks!
Rich the Recruiter
Los Angeles
Rafe: I’m with you. I believe in clean installs. Seth, Tom?
LETS DO THE CLAY Q AFTER THIS?
**************How can I share folders between Windows 7 and my Mac?*****************
Hey guys,
I’ve got a Windows 7 computer and a couple Mac OSX Leopard computers.
How can I do folder sharing so I can drop files between the two? Even
better would be automagical syncing but that’s not really needed.
As a bonus question how about screen sharing from the Mac to the PC?
From Mac to Mac it’s easy but I haven’t quite figured it out for Mac to
PC. Don’t really care for PC to Mac on this on as it’s so my wife can
eaves drop on me from time to time as a sort of accountability for me.
Thanks
Clay J
Sugarsync. I use it and love it. Free account has limited space, if you pay you get like 60GM
Alternative is Dropbox.
For screensharing: LogMeIn Free. And see a marriage counselor.
*******************************
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Tom Merritt appears on CNET TV and loves to dive into technology and help consumers fight fear, uncertainty, and doubt with technology.
Rafe Needleman is editor of Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications. He lives to discover great new online apps – and to rip apart bad ones.
Go to the Start menu, right-click Computer, and left click Properties. On the window that pops up, look for where it says "Processor: ," and right next to that will be the processor that you have installed. Then you can just Google it to see if it's 64-bit capable. If the architecture is x86-64 (or it might just say x64), you're fine. If the architecture is just x86, you're screwed.
I was just listening to the show and I wanted to comment on the conversation about the guy that asked if he should subscribe to technet in order to get windows 7 for his 5 computers.
I don't know the certain circumstances of what he is doing on those computers, but I would suggest being careful with trying to use a technet account for this purpose. The technet and msdn accounts are more for the people in the professional field to use in order to evaluate or develop software on windows systems. My understanding is that most of the time, when you subscribe to something like MSDN, you are agreeing to restrictions as to how many actual copies of the software you are going to use simultaneously. For example, with MSDN, it is very likely that you are going to be requisitioned a single license key for any given product that you decide to download off their service. While taking this key and using it across multiple systems in your home/business is possible, it should break your agreed terms of service. Trying to save money by using these services for the unintended situations is highly frowned upon.
For Technet+ you will be able to access and download some, but not all MS software. Generally speaking all OS's are available with the exception of some Enterprise level OS's, these you have to belong to MSDN or be a MS Partner to receive. The OS's include everything from Win 3.1 to present including most server OS's such as 2003 and 2008.
Each OS has versions that you can download, such as on Vista being able to get everything from basic to ultimate.
Each OS comes with up to 10 keys, these never expire. The only way you can loose them is if you happen to give them out to others then they get posted as available keys for download on various nefarious sites. GUARD THEM WITH YOUR LIFE! I have heard horror stories about this, and have seen posts concerning this very thing, MS will in-validate the keys and you can loose your subscription.
Now I am not condoning this but I have heard of people joining for 1 year just to get the keys then dropping their subscription and they still receive updates to their software even 2 or 3 years later. I would assume this means that MS does not take the time to invalidate the keys once you drop, but they could since it is in their license agreement for Technet+.
I myself have been a subscriber for several years and I love it, never have to buy OS's since they are not used outside of their licensing with the exception of some COA's for my server OS's. I highly recommend having a subscription if you work in the IT field as it is invaluable as a resource, many times I have questions that I post in the subscribers area and I receive the majority of my answers within 1 hour, very nice.
BTW love the show and watch it every week, I get quite a few good tips from it.
Seaghost
Happily using MS since 1984
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#1- the new Windows Backup/Restore Center in the Control Panel.
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During Tom's recent "How To", he said that after installing Windows 7, you should use a third-party program to create a fresh image of the new system. I have to disagree on this particular point. Specifically, I would argue that you should actually use the system image tool built directly into W7. Believe it or not, this is one thing that MS finally got right.
However, I am slightly confused about the backup/restore function itself. Let me describe my set-up, as it might help put things into a clearer picture:
- I've got the Toshiba 500GB 5400RPM laptop drive in a USB enclosure connected to an Ubuntu Desktop Server.
- The drive is shared over Samba and easily found through W7 on my Acer 4530 laptop.
- Once a week, I use W7's system image tool to copy an image directly onto the drive over my WiFi network.
Now, here's where the confusion happens.
If I use Window's Backup utility, it acts like Apple's Time Machine, where I can see versions and go back in time through my laptop. However, since the drive is connected to Unix Server, I cannot see the individual files if I SSH or FTP into the box.
To solve this dilemma, I use the free GFI backup Home Edition to backup the files. Unfortunately, it's not versioning the files.
Am I interpreting the issue with the W7 backup utility correctly?
SideBar: I then backup that whole drive, both the system image, and the raw files, to CrashPlan.
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#2- Libraries
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In older versions of Windows, it was slightly difficult to reallocate your Documents/Videos/Downloads/Music/etc folders to a secondary directory. That is no longer the case with Windows 7.
On my laptop, I partitioned the drive so all of the above are actually stored in a second partition. The reason for that is 2-fold:
The first is so I can reinstall the OS without losing my data, if needed, so the only thing I'd have to reinstall are the programs.
The second is so those files, profiles, etc, are accessible through my Ubuntu partition. This means that my firefox, thunderbird, pidgin profiles, and all music is accessible from either OS.
Now, if only Windows would finally let me install Programs to a third partition I'd be happy; but until they get rid of the registry, that won't happen. However, as an alternative, I have considered putting portable apps on a third windows partition.
Anyway, I hope this helps some people.
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#3- Antivirus and Firewalls
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I've been using Comodo Internet Security Firewall/Antivirus on this Windows 7 installation; for those of you wondering which free AntiVirus software is working...
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#4- 64-bit vs. 32-bit
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I got the Windows 7 Launch Party Kit and inside, it came with BOTH 64 and 32 bit versions. There was a letter included that specifically said that I could install either version (only once), and use the same key that I got for either one. So, I hope that answers anyone's question wondering about keys and 32 bit/64 bit.
Marc
The Technomensch from Coral Springs, FL
I'm in Australia if that changes anything.
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by yourfault1
October 26, 2009 8:03 AM PDT
- So I realize this is a week-old article, but I still have a related question:
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Like this
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(22 Comments)If I buy a netbook right now, I can get it with Win7 Starter. However, there are a lot of features that were 'removed' from Starter - most simply, the ability to change the desktop background.
Question 1 - Are there any standard features that I would expect to be in any OS that are not in Starter Edition? (I read somewhere that it will not play DVD's from an external DVD player, not sure I believe this one though)
Question 2 - Are netbooks powerful enough and capable of being upgraded to Home Premium to gain these features back?