Clinton here, bring you more juicy, very juicy thoughts in Windows 7 land.

Windows 7 Launch Dates Confirmed:
So dates are being confirmed from Microsoft that the 22 October 2009  is the launch for Windows 7 - to be in stores. And the kiwis will have the first store launches as the sun rises over New Zealand. There is also rumours that Microsoft will only be doing low key launches for the new OS this time. But I can’t see this happening - this is a HOT product!  Exciting times…

However, some retailers are already jumping on the bandwagon to do some early promotions of the product that includes free upgrades for those who purchase Vista based computers on or after the June 26^th.
Lesson 101 – How to make money off something that is not there yet – Sell it early and throw in a perk!

Oh well, I guess that’s how the marketing world spins. Speaking of spinning, the launch date, according to Microsoft, to release the RTM version to Partners is not too far off. 2^nd half of July 2009 it will be made available to Microsoft Partners. This is to build your gorgeous customized, vanilla flavored, what everyone will have on his or her desktops, SOE, for your business.

Anyway, back to the present.

So, when a new version of Windows is released, people either upgrade their existing PC’s or purchase a new PC one. The new system will for the most part have the latest version of Windows already pre-installed.

Now, if you want to upgrade your system you are often challenged with question of whether your PC can actually run a newer version of Windows OS.
Fortunately, Microsoft has taken ALL the guess work out of this issue and provided you, as it has been so with other new for new OS’s,  a special little gizmo application.

It’s called an Upgrade Advisor.
And with Windows 7 coming out soon, you can download the – Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool, to see how your PC is posed in its performance / readiness for Windows 7.

I would like to add to this picture, Windows 7 IS a significant OS that has been rebuilt, refined and tuned TO CATER for older, less apparant systems.
And thats the beauty of this OS…it will, on just about any older classed system run without few or any glitches. But hey, dont tke my word for it – USE this tool to prove it. You’ll be shocked!

Currently there is a beta version of the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor available. Click here to download it.
The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is a free tool that you can download to examine your PC’s processor, memory, storage, and graphics capabilities. The tool will also identify known compatibility issues with installed software and devices. On completion, a results page is displayed where the findings are clearly laid out and marked. The tool will clearly provide you with guidance on how to resolve known issues if at all possible.

Note:
If you are a Windows XP user – you will be required to do a clean install of the Windows 7 RC and the RTM version. And only PCs with Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7.
However, I would recommend doing fresh from the ground up clean install.

After running the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor on my Vista Enterprise OS system, I confirmed these results:   

The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool measures  your PCs ability to upgrade smoothly to Windows 7. This is based on the following: 

• 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
• DirectX® 9 graphics processor with WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.0 or higher driver

Also, make sure you have plugged in any USB devices or other devices such as printers, external hard drives, or scanners that are regularly used with the PC BEFORE you run this tool. The extra devices are ALSO scanned and checked as part of the scan.  

Finally what else can be said but the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor is easy enough for anyone to use and quick too. Took me about 5mins to complete the scan and review the results…

GO NOW and download the 32bit or 64bit version (for Dual Core CPU’s).

Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Have a great day! J

Clinton Garbutt – Desktop Productivity Specialist
MCP, MCDST, MCTS, MCITP

DATA#3
Australia’s Integrator of the Year 

Clinton here, with some more spurring thoughts on the forth coming OS, Windows 7.
I have asked this question before, in a previous post, but the impact of the question cover a vast land of thought.

Question:  Why should I upgrade my business to Windows 7 rather than stay with Windows XP or Vista?

Ok, so here’s a reality check, if a good portion of your current desktop users are still running XP, then you should seriously look at moving up to Windows 7, because, Microsoft ended mainstream support for XP on April 14 2008. No ways? – Yeah seriously!

Critical security updates ONLY will be provided at no cost for XP licensed users up to the year 2014.  Furthermore, if you need additional / extended support for XP because moving is not an option just yet for you, then you will need to pay for that as a paid contract customer with Microsoft.

Ok but hear me out,   the most important reason why you SHOULD consider moving forward with Windows 7 from XP is security. There is more internet crime, hacking and brute force attacks on networks than ever before.

Both Vista and Windows 7 provide way better security than XP. A feature that springs to mind right away is the User Account Control (UAC).  User Account Control (UAC) is a technology and security infrastructure introduced with Vista.

How does it work?

It works by improving the levels of security a user can have when working on a workstation, and it limits the application software to standard user privilege levels until your friendly system administrator gives the authorization to increase those privilege levels for the specific application.

So now, only applications that the user can trust get higher privileges. The ripple effect rolls from here into the Malware arena.
Malware is an application. So it doesn’t get privileges to run in order to compromise your Vista/WIN7 operating system, because the UAC controls the access.

In other words, a user account may have administrator privileges assigned to it, but applications that the user activates does not. So privileges for applications, unless approved beforehand will not run.

And here is the Cherry on the Cake – To reduce the possibility of lower-privilege applications communicating with higher-privilege ones,  Windows 7 includes another technology called , User Interface Privilege Isolation… ooh!
This is used in together with UAC to divide these processes from each other so that more control is achieved over applications.

What are some of the items triggering a UAC prompt?

Operating system commands or actions that require administrator rights (a UAC trigger) are marked with the security shield symbol. Ding!

Tasks that require administrator privileges will trigger a UAC prompt (if UAC is enabled) are marked by a 4-color security shield symbol.

 Here are tasks that will prompt for administrator authorisation:

• Changes to system-wide settings or to files in %SystemRoot% or %ProgramFiles%
• Installing and uninstalling applications
• Installing device drivers
• Installing ActiveX controls
• Changing settings for Windows Firewall
• Changing UAC settings
• Configuring Windows Update
• Adding or removing user accounts
• Changing a user’s account type
• Configuring Parental Controls
• Running Task Scheduler
• Restoring backed-up system files
• Viewing or changing another user’s folders and files.

So what are you waiting for? Don’t let your guard down across the enterprise network! Boost your security and stay on top by installing Windows 7. See how it runs…! There is MORE coming up…but for now I’m playing in Windows 7 land!

So what are you waiting for? GO and download the 32 bit or 64 bit version (for Dual Core CPU’s) of Windows 7 TODAY.

Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Have a great day!

Clinton Garbutt – Desktop Productivity Specialist
MCP, MCDST, MCTS, MCITP

DATA#3
Australia’s Integrator of the Year