Windows 7 Upgrade

I have tried the Win 7 upgrade – I like it and it seems to perform well with most of the Realtor programs I run. I was running Vista and Win 7 is a dramatic improvement over Vista.

What’s the easiest way to try the upgrade?

I strongly recommend that you buy a new hard drive and install Win 7 on the new fresh drive. Hard drives are relatively inexpensive – you should be able to get a 1000 GB 3.5″ (SATA or PATA) drive for less than $100. Also, 2.5″ Notebook drives are not as inexpensive but you should be able to pick up a $120-250 GB dive for less than $100. They are relatively easy to install in your computer.

Win 7 has a lot of drivers and I didn’t have to add any drivers for my DELL Desktop and Notebook – I just put in the Win 7 disk and ran it. Win 7 “found” all my components that needed drivers and installed them.

The reason I like the new drive approach is that you can plug the old drive back in or access it via some other means if you encounter a problem – a problem in the case usually means you need some data from the old drive.  A possible loss of data is just not worth trying to write the new Win 7 over the existing drive and data. What do I mean by access the drive via other means? One, you may have an open slot in your desktop that you can put the new and old drive into. Second, there are low cost USB to Drive cables available where you can access the old drive info via a USB port. Third, you can simply swap out the “new” Win 7 drive with the old drive and load your date onto a disk or some other storage device like a USB Memory stick.

What about the programs? There are a few basic types of programs you run – one being the type where you access the program on the net, Winforms or Paragon for example. In this case, make sure you copy the web address of the program. So, type this in to your browser window and when it comes up right click on the screen and look for “add shortcut” and right click on that and you now have the program shortcut on your desktop. Another type is the “purchased” programs like Microsoft Office – you need to “reload” these programs if you still have the original disks or buy a new copy of the program. Then another type is things like printer drivers etc, which need to be re-installed.

Another minor issue is that Microsoft will try to “convert” you to Bing!, their search engine or some MSDN stuff. Just type in “Google” to get the Google screen when Internet Explorer comes up, go to “Tools”, then internet Options, select “Use Current” and close and Google should then come up as your default search engine.

Drop me a note if you have any questions. Gary at TruckeeRealEstate@gmail.com