Random Ramblings

A few weeks back I was given the task of upgrading my girlfriend’s laptop from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional. Traditionally I like to do a clean format when changing OS. You just never know what rubbish can creep into the new install.

One piece of software that she has (Sibelius I’m looking at you) can be a bit of a pain to get licensed, and not wanting to lose any of her work files, I decided to investigate the in-place upgrade. I had heard that performing an in-place upgrade was smooth and relatively pain-free, if not lengthy, so I was optimistic that it wouldn’t be a problem, but was still cautious. Another hitch is the fact that Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, does not allow you to perform an in-place upgrade from Vista Home Premium (or for that matter Home Basic) to Windows 7 Professional. That is, not without a little trick that I’ll explain a bit further down.

As a precaution, I took a backup of all of the files and settings in Vista using the Windows Easy Transfer software provided on the Windows 7 DVD. I left this going overnight as there were near on 20 Gb worth of files to backup. As the program title says, this was easy. In the meantime I set up a VM, installed Vista Home Premium so that I can test the trick I found. I didn’t want to go stuffing anything up and leaving an unworkable system. The trick worked without any hitch at all so I was confident that the real upgrade will proceed without an issue.

So here’s the deal. I doubt that this is against the license agreement, since the end result is still a legally acquired upgrade DVD installed on a laptop that has a legally acquired OS, and has the same net effect of performing a custom install and all applications and files transferred onto the new OS. Having said that, don’t shoot me if that assumption turns out to be incorrect. Note also that you will have to modify the registry to perform this trick, so if you go editing something else that’s on you if things go crazy.

The Windows 7 Setup only checks two registry values to see what edition of Vista is running on the computer, in order to determine whether to perform an in-place upgrade or to stop you and tell you to go perform a clean/custom install. The values are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, EditionID; and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, ProductName

For Vista Home Premium, the EditionID value will be HomePremium and ProductName will be Windows Vista Home Premium. You need to change them to Business and Windows Vista Business respectively. And there you have it. Windows 7 Setup will upgrade your OS to Windows 7 Professional. You could possibly change these values to upgrade to a lower edition of Windows 7, but whether that viloates the license agreement is yet to be determined.

Back to my experience…
Thanks to the laptop manufacturer, instructions were provided as to how best to perform an upgrade with the included applications. There were a few items to uninstall pre-upgrade which were thankfully not too difficult. A reboot or two later and I was ready to modify the registry and perform the upgrade. As confirmed on the VM, the trick worked and Windows 7 Setup started the upgrade.

I believe what happens is Setup takes a backup of all of the files in Program Files and Users, performs almost a clean install, then restores the files to their original location. The in-place upgrade took about 3-4 hours, so be prepared. Once the upgrade was done I installed the Windows 7 drivers provided by the laptop manufacturer and crossed my fingers as my girlfriend checked it out to make sure nothing was lost and that everything else works as expected. Luckily, it did.

All in all, this adds to my belief that Microsoft have released their best OS by far in Windows 7. The setup process (for both a clean install and an upgrade) is easy and seemless, the interface changes between Vista and 7 work much better and actually make sense, and it performs like a dream. If you’re about to upgrade from Vista to 7, don’t fret too much. Take a backup, just in case, and let Setup work it’s magic. You’ll thank yourself for it.

I recently purchased a new desktop.  My old one was 3 years old, just coming out of lease and is getting a bit slow and weary.  I have always been a big fan of Dell.  Their service is excellent and their products are just as good as the rest of them, if not a little better.  So off I went to the Dell website.  I almost had one picked and purchased when I saw the new release Studio XPS Desktop and reading through the specs, I decided that it’s the one that I want.

It’s interesting that Dell have joined the Studio and XPS range in this unit.  The XPS range are usually aimed at the high end, gamers and people who want the best performing PCs.  The Studio range are targeted for those who want a media centre PC.  So with this release they have tried to bridge the two sectors of customers together and for the most part it seems like a good combination.

Now for the part that really matters (at least to me), the specs. Dell have chosen the new Core i7 range from Intel to power this machine.  Those of you (like me) who haven’t been paying attention for the past 6 or more months may not know there’s a new processor in town.  And not just new, it’s an entirely different CPU: Quad-core WITH Hyper-threading, built-in DDR 3 tri-channel memory controller and 8Mb of L3 cache (there is L2 cache for each core with the L3 cache shared between all cores).  It’s one of the first (that I’ve seen) Dell consumer PCs to also include Vista 64 bit edition as the only option.  No choice between the two. It’s 64 or no PC for you.  I guess it makes sense, the consumers of this desktop are likely to want more than 3Gb RAM and 64 bit is the only way to get this.  Be careful though, tri-channel means to get the best performance, memory size must be a multiple of 3.  I made this mistake and have purchased 4, but will upgrade this to 6 in the near future.  The base model video card is an ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512Mb RAM.

With the desktop, I purchased 2 x 23″ SP2309W widescreen monitors which I will use one of for each of the desktops, along with a 19″ standard LCD.  I’ll talk about the 23″ monitors in a moment.

The machine flies.  I haven’t used a computer this fast and responsive ever, even using XP.  Of course, having the 4Gb memory is probably responsible for this.  Reviews I’ve read have put the i7 at the top of the performance charts, even beating most (if not all) of the Core 2 Quad CPUs, and definately most of the AMD Phenom 2′s.

Dell have really taken to the piano glossy black, instead of the silver and black or even the glossy white my last desktop had.  They have hidden the drives behind flip down panels, and the memory card reader, front USB, firewire and audio ports are hidden by a slide up/down panel.  They also seem to favour white LED’s, using one for both of the power and HDD indicators.  The keyboard is very flat and sleek, the keys are similar in style to that of a notebook.  It has taken me a little while to get used to the keys, especially considering the Home/Insert/End/Delete/Page Up/Page Down keys aren’t set out like a regular keyboard.  The mouse is a laser mouse with a left and right side button as well as a button to control the speed of the mouse pointer, also in glossy black, and is relatively comfortable.

The one odd thing is that the motherboard and case are of an ATX design.  Dell were one of the pioneers of the BTX form factor, however for some strange reason they have reverted back to ATX.  Why I’m not sure but I guess they have their reasons.  The fan is variable speed, and in my use, even the slightest hint of CPU load will have it spin up which you can hear quite clearly.  But since my current CPU load averages at 1%, that doesn’t happen all too often.

On to the monitor.  Again, it’s the glossy black style with white LED’s.  Max resolution is 2048 x 1152 which is higher than Full HD.  Obviously they are marketing them as a TV replacement along with the Studio desktops, given that along with the VGA and DVI connector there is an HDMI connector.  I haven’t tested HD content yet, but I hope to shortly.  The power and menu buttons aren’t really buttons.  They seem to be touch sensitive regions on the side of the monitor, mounted vertically.  Using another object in the region does not make the ‘button’ react.  The LED’s that point to the different regions also fade when not in use.  The bottom most menu lights up when an object is about 1cm away so that you know where it is.  There is also a high pitched beep whenever a button is pressed, but thankfully that can be turned off.  A webcam is also included in the top of the monitor and there are 4 USB ports (2 underneath and 2 on the left side).

Overall, I’m suitably impressed.  The performance seems to be available when needed and if I ever do decide to play a game or two, the video card will help me out. Although I went a little over budget, I think the extra expense will be worth it in the long run.  My only beef with the whole purchase is that one of the speaker options is a UK product code (and last time I checked it still is).  It just so happens that these speakers were included as part of the package when I ordered, but I have contacted Dell and they are fixing that for me.