Posts Tagged ‘technology’

About a month ago I signed up to host a Windows 7 launch party.  Officially, Microsoft will release Windows 7 on Octobery 22.  Those selected to host a party are suppose to have a party within a week after the launch.  My party will be on October 25.

I received a nice box of goodies today from Microsoft including party favors, balloons, napkins, playing card, a jigsaw puzzle and Windows 7 tote bags.  Most importantly the box also included a Signature Edition of Windows 7 Ultimate.  There were actually two DVDs in the box: 32bit and 64bit.

The instructions said to install Windows 7 right away.  The host needs to be well versed in the new operating system features before the party gets here.  I wasted no time in getting started with the installation.  My Dell Studio 17 is less than six months old and runs Windows Vista Home Premium.  I did something I never do… an upgrade (sorry Paul Thurrot).

The Studio 17 is my main laptop.  It is packed with everything: pictures, video, music, software and all my documents.  A pre-installation scan said there were 930,000 files on the hard drive.  I then received a warning that this could take a few hours.  No big deal.  I had other computers to use while the upgrade progressed.

Before I started, I told Mesh to go offline.  Otherwise I left everything running including Symantec Antivirus.  The upgrade took five hours but worked perfectly!  As soon as everything finished, I logged in and Mesh immediately grabbed all the files I had created while the installation progressed.

I have been using the Beta of Windows 7 for many months.  It has worked well even on my oldest computers.  Now that I’m officially using the production version, it looks great.  This is my first blog post from my upgraded computer.  Plan to see many more.

This PowerPoint answers a few common questions about technology. If there is a critical topic that you think should be added, let me know. I can update the deck.

Click the play button (single click) and the presentation will go by itself.

Sometime yesterday Protopage had an upgrade.  Here is what the site looked like before the upgrade.

Below is the same page after the upgrade.  Notice how everything is shifted down about half an inch so that the options tab can be seen at the top. 

The options tab is not new.  Before this upgrade, the tab was at the bottom.  That was nice considering that I use the options tab only a few times each year.  I have posted a “downgrade” request on the Protopage blog.  While I wait for a response, I’ll spend a little more time scrolling on my startpage.

The iPod Touch has become my most valuable piece of technology.   Last week I added this gem from Nemustech.  Nemus Sync is a free utility that syncs Google Calendar with the Touch’s built-in calendar.  Syncing works in both directions.

You have to jailbreak your Touch before you can add this utility.  About a month after I bought my Touch I watched a couple of videos on YouTube and found easy to follow step-by-step instructions.

The average person can probably get by just fine with the built-in functionality of the Touch now that POP and IMAP email are included.  Some of my jailbreak additions include Wikipedia and Mobile Twitter which I use on a daily basis. 

If you do jailbreak your Touch, don’t do the automatic updates of the firmware.  I turned those off a long time ago.  I think it was the day I got the following message from Apple:

There is an upgrade for iTunes.  It’s called Safari.  Would you like to install it?

I had a flashback to 1996 when everyone was trying to get you to install “their” browser.  I don’t understand how Apple can do something like this and it goes mostly unnoticed.  If Microsoft were to try to push a browser out to an OS X machine that was upgrading a media player, it would be all over the tech news.

I’m not about to drink the Kool-Aid.