My Old Pentium 4
It had been five years since I purchased Duotronic, my seventh primary desktop computer. It still ran fairly reliably, in part thanks to a couple of disk crashes over the years which forced me to reinstall Windows XP and reset the “Death by Registry” clock. Windows is notorious for how its registry gradually clogs up over time as one adds and removes programs, eventually making the system sluggish and unreliable. But even with those refreshes, five years is a long time for any machine to be your primary system. Old Duotronic was taking a long time to boot up, couldn’t handle large video edits very well, and its operating system was first released almost a decade ago. So, with the advent of Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard and Microsoft’s Windows 7, I decided it was time to upgrade.
Long-Term Desktop Strategy
I’ve always purchased mid-range and higher DOS/Windows desktop systems that are good performers and can last me about five years. Replacing my home desktop computer more often than twice per decade is simply too painful to contemplate, what with the gigabytes of files to transfer and the oodles of applications to install. But, although buying a system that must last many years, I still stay a few notches below the bleeding edge. The highest-end microprocessors never offer enough extra bang for their many extra bucks.
My old system had a 32-bit Pentium 4 chip with a clock speed of 3.6 GHz, near the 3.8 GHz maximum Intel was able to achieve with that architecture. Since then, unable to continue to boost clock speed without major heat problems, Intel started producing dual-core and now quad-core chips where you get several processors on a chip coupled to ever-larger on-chip memory caches. Thus they can outperform the old single-core systems despite their slower clock speeds.
64-bit Multiple-Core Systems
So I knew I’d buy a multiple-core system and I also wanted to shift to a 64-bit architecture. My first two personal computers were 8-bit machines, then I had a 16-bit machine, and the next four were 32-bit systems. The more bits, the more data the processor can shovel through per cycle and the more memory it can use. 32-bit systems can’t make use of more than four gigabytes of RAM, and my most recent system already had two gigabytes. I didn’t want to be limited to only three or four gigabytes in my new one, and now both Apple and Microsoft have operating systems that support 64-bit applications and a 64-bit machine can theoretically access up to 16 exabytes of RAM. Exabytes? An exabyte is roughly a billion gigabytes. I’ll settle for eight gigabytes of RAM for now, which is 262,144 times as much memory as my first computer!
The Apple Tax
My New Vector Z35
Next I needed to decide between an Apple Macintosh or a Microsoft Windows PC. Apple’s laptop computers and all-in-one iMacs are highly praised, but one hears far less about their big desktop system, the Mac Pro. I already have a fun little netbook and an iPhone 3G for my portable computing needs, so I’d be looking at an iMac or a Mac Pro. I already have a good LCD monitor and wanted more power than the iMac could offer, but a quad-core Mac Pro with the RAM and mirrored hard drives I wanted would cost over $4,000. Whoa, Nelly! I paid $3,500 for a PC back in 1993, but I’m not about to pay that kind of price nowadays. Especially since I’d still need to buy a copy of Windows 7 to put on the Mac Pro for dual-booting and would be purchasing a number of Mac applications to take advantage of OS X. I suppose a guy who prefers Toyotas to BMWs will also choose Windows PCs over Apple desktops.
I’m No Gamer, But…
With Apple no longer a prospect, I shifted my attention to Dell. I’ve used many of their systems over the years at work and home, but I wasn’t impressed by their pricing on a higher-end system. PC World, PCMag.com and CNET all thought highly of Velocity Micro’s Edge Z30 gaming system. I’m no gamer, but I was impressed by the reviews, even though that gaming system didn’t have the latest microprocessor nor did it offer RAID 1 hard drive mirroring for data redundancy. A visit to Velocity Micro’s website showed I really needed their Vector Z35 system. I configured it with a quad-core 2.66 GHz Intel i7-920 microprocessor, 8 GB of RAM, a 512 MB ATI graphics card, two one-terabyte 7200 rpm hard drives in RAID 1 configuration, a 20x DVD burner with LightScribe labeling, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition. I’m reusing my 20” Samsung LCD monitor and my Dell surround speakers, so the system cost me $1,580 plus another $150 for Office 2007. That handily beats Apple’s boutique pricing on the Mac Pro, although I would have liked to try OS X.
Inside my Z35
I like to name my systems after fictional computer scientists and the like. Vector seemed the obvious choice this time, since it is the maker’s name for this model and Professor Vector was Hermione Granger’s arithmancy professor at Hogwarts. Vector arrived on Thursday and is one big beast, rivaling my 1993 Forbin system in size if not weight. And I’ve now traded in Duotronic’s rounded plastic Dell case for a big black metal box with a huge window in the side which lets you peer in at hardware lit up by colorful LEDs. Even the keyboard is backlit by blue LEDs. This system is a looker!
Windows 7 Is a Winner
But the best thing by far about my new system is Windows 7
Vista brought a cool new look to Windows, but the few times I used it on a friend’s systems it seemed quite sluggish, and its User Account Control was maddening with its incessant interruptions. XP has its own stupidities such as the blithering balloon tips, which pop up and sit there until you close them, and the cancerous Notification Area with its metastasizing icons. But User Account Control (UAC) was even worse, demanding your attention incessantly. It reminded me of how the old ZoneAlarm firewall would not leave you alone. I think UAC was designed by the same folks who created the maddening Clippy “assistant” in Microsoft Office, which did anything but help you keep working. I’ve now installed a score of applications, and the UAC only briefly interrupted once each time to confirm I really wanted to let the program change the system. This is a good security measure, what with all of the malware out there trying to infect your system. Changes I myself initiate within Windows rarely trigger the revised UAC at its default setting.
The Windows 7 Taskbar
The most noticeable change in 7, beyond the improved appearance, is the new taskbar. The Quick Launch area is replaced by pinning application icons into the taskbar. By default the icons are big and unlabelled, and each instance of an application stacks under its icon. This isn’t nearly as annoying as it was in XP, since now you can scroll your mouse over an icon and see pop-up live previews of the application’s windows, jumping to or closing one with a single click. Windows highlights icons so you can see at a glance which applications are currently running and if they have multiple windows. I loved the “Show Desktop” icon in XP, but it was missing from too many users’ Quick Launch areas. Windows 7 has a permanent spot for this feature on the far right end of the taskbar. It appears that Microsoft adapted the best ideas from Apple’s Dock to truly improve the taskbar’s functionality.
Libraries
Another nice addition is Libraries, where Windows can group all of your documents or pictures or whatever from a variety of directories into one view. I’m an old-school DOS man, so I like knowing precisely where a file is in the disk structure. This is still easy to figure out in Windows 7 once you realize “My Documents” has moved from “C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents” to “C:\Users\username\Documents” and that the Documents Library can see into that directory as well as any other you specify, all in one view. I expect rookies will sometimes get confused by Libraries, but power users will welcome the functionality.
Windows 7 Gadgets
Another fun and useful addition is Gadgets – little applications that run on your desktop. I’ve used Yahoo Widgets on my XP system for years, and Vista had similar Gadgets yet by default associated them with an annoying sidebar. Windows 7 immediately lets you plant a Gadget anywhere you want on the desktop and gets rid of the pesky Dock that plagues Yahoo Widgets. The calendar and weather gadgets are attractive, and I like the CPU meter even though it is no more useful than the tachometer on my automatic-transmission automobile.
Adobe Crumbles to Windows Live Movie Maker
Microsoft kept Windows 7 light and spry by deliberately omitting some applications that came standard with Vista or even XP. But you can download the ones you want from the Microsoft Live site. I’ve been using their handy Windows Live Sync tool to keep files in sync at work and at home, and today I downloaded and used their new Windows Live Movie Maker to create a video, Waters of Autumn, of various creeks and brooks I’ve shot during my day hikes this fall. I only shoot short clips on my handheld digital camera, but in the past I crashed Duotronic repeatedly trying to create videos from them using Adobe’s Premiere Elements 5. I have learned to hate Adobe’s software, which is slow, bloated, and buggy. I still use Acrobat at work and like doing some lighting touchups in Photoshop Elements 4 (I know, they’re up to version 8 these days), but I really wanted to avoid purchasing Premiere Elements 8, especially since PCMag.com reported their beta review copy had bugs, even as they rewarded it their coveted Editor’s Choice.
I had good luck on a recent trip using XP’s Movie Maker on my little netbook, so I thought I would see if the new free Windows Live Movie Maker could serve my needs. As Waters of Autumn shows, it works just fine, although I had to use my trusty ThumbsPlus to paste in the Creative Commons logo before importing a picture for the end credit slide. The AutoMovie feature is especially nice for quickly adding transitions and the like. And it has built-in YouTube export capability and a plug-in will let you quickly export to Facebook as well. Now they need to add one for Flickr and I’m set. This little program isn’t nearly as powerful, nor as cumbersome and frustrating, as Premiere Elements. As the wonderful Jerry Pournelle would say, “Recommended.”
I’m also using the Windows Live Writer to compose this blog post. It interfaces to WordPress and other blog services, and is a much better editor than the native WordPress one.
A Slow Wizard
The most annoying thing about my upgrade was that it took Microsoft’s File and Settings Transfer Wizard over twelve hours to bring my documents over from Duotronic to Vector via the wired router connection. But that did bring over more than 400 gigabytes of data with few problems. Why so much data? Almost half is a friend’s backups which had overwhelmed the old external drives on hand. Plus my extensive (and entirely legal, thank you very much) music and audiobook collection takes up another 100 gigabytes, there are over 40 gigabytes of photographs, and so on.
My new camera
I’ve been doing a lot of digital photography on my day hikes this year and I’ve been posting the best of them to Flickr. That exposure (pun intended) has led to some of my photographs, which I put out under a Creative Commons license, being used for various websites and even music CD artwork. Friends have been somewhat surprised to find out that my camera was a miniscule Canon Elph point-and-shoot with limited resolution and zoom. A friend loaned me her Canon superzoom camera last weekend, and I greatly appreciated its 10x zoom with image stabilization. So I decided I’d ask for the positively reviewed Panasonic DMC-ZS3
Tweaking the Transfer
I was careful to deauthorize my iTunes music on the old machine, since some of those files are still DRMed, and told iTunes to organize and consolidate its files before making the transfer. It all came through okay, although iTunes did lose its database pointers to a couple dozen files, forcing me to relocate them for it manually. They transferred over; iTunes just didn’t know where they were. The transfer wizard got most of the application settings over okay, although when installing older applications I sometimes had to copy their files over from the hidden “C:\Documents and Settings\username” directory in Windows XP to the hidden “C:\Users\username\AppData\Local” or “C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming” directories in Windows 7. Another hiccup came when trying to sync my iPhone to the new computer. It complained that the Audible audiobooks were not authorized for that computer. I’d forgotten they are separatedly DRMed. iTunes claimed the computer was authorized with Audible, but that was an artifact of the imported settings. I couldn’t get it to work until I deauthorized the old computer’s Audible account and then tried again to play an audiobook in iTunes on the new computer. That let me re-enter my Audible account information and authorize the new machine. As the folks at Buzz Out Loud are fond of saying, DRM only annoys law-abiding users, since pirates know how to defeat it and get their music and books DRM-free via BitTorrent sites. Count me as annoyed, but not enough to become a pirate, arrrrr!
Mozilla Thunderbird
I flirted with the idea of abandoning Mozilla Thunderbird and just using the online Gmail interface for email, but I like having my own local copy of my emails and dislike the inherent slight delays for web-based email access, so I stuck with Thunderbird, which I interface to Gmail via IMAP. An annoyance under Windows XP was that my employer’s Outlook WebAccess client was incompatible with the new Internet Explorer 8, and its Firefox interface was limited. So I had downgraded XP to Internet Explorer 7 to get the full functionality out of Outlook WebAccess. Thankfully the Windows 7 iteration of Internet Explorer 8 works fine with the WebAccess client. I still use Firefox for all other web browsing, invoking the IE Tab plug-in when I need to view an online PowerPoint, such as my own Failure By Design presentation.
Driving the Printer Crazy
On the hardware front, Windows 7 can make use of Vista drivers. I searched online for Windows 7 drivers for my Hewlett Packard Photosmart 7960 inkjet printer and ScanJet G4010 scanner, but they said to use the installation defaults, and Windows 7 installed them without a hitch. The scanner interface is much more attractive than the XP version, and has the same design as the improved Camera wizard, letting you automatically name imported pictures and scans with the date and a tag. Some vendors will take advantage of the new Device Stage feature, but I’m quite pleased with how even my older hardware works with Windows 7.
That’s not to say I didn’t encounter one hardware problem. While the inkjet installed just fine, things did not go as smoothly for my Brother HL-5150D laser printer. When I plugged it in, Windows 7 did not recognize it, and all I could find at Brother’s website was a 64-bit Vista driver. Installing it with that driver left Windows 7 confused about the printer’s connection, and in desperation I picked one of the USB ports from a list. That left Windows 7 utterly confused about whether that port was for the HP inkjet or the Brother laser printer – obviously I made a poor choice. Printing became unreliable on both units and the Troubleshooter in Devices and Printers did its best but could only get one printer working at a given time. After some reboots and continuing trouble, I finally yanked both printers out, removed them from Devices and Printers, and reinstalled them both, being careful to pick a different USB port when dealing with the Brother. That finally set things right.
Happy Computing
It was worth the weekend to set up the new system. I thought the initial transfer would only take overnight on Friday, but its glacial pace left me time to go on a long walk on the Pathfinder Parkway on Saturday morning, and a rainy Sunday gave me time to create this absurdly long blog post about my experience. I’m so delighted with Windows 7 that I’ve bought a Family Pack
