Still on an old Microsoft system? It might be time to move up and do an upgrade, as studies and tests are showing consistently better performance from the new Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. Your old system might be limping along, but there's no harm in making things better and improving your productivity.

One of the standard expectations when using technology is the inevitable need to change and upgrade. Technology moves forward on the principle that things that already seem great can be made even better – and more often than not, the improvements are worth the change.

This principle applies to the operating system and SMB platform you may be using now. While it may have served you well so far (after all, if it ain't broke, why fix it, right?), that doesn't mean that things can't get any better – and in a measureable way that improves your productivity. With systems like Windows 7 (which isn't exactly 'new', since it's been around for a good while) and Windows 2008 R2 gaining ground in the market and proving their worth, it may be time to start thinking about moving up and upgrading your current software.

Here are some thoughts to start the ball rolling: studies and tests have shown that Windows 7 and 2008 R2 outperform their predecessors in almost every conceivable situation. And considering Microsoft's recent announcement that they will discontinue support for Windows XP by 2014, the possibility of needing to upgrade becomes more pressing. Like it or not, you will eventually get left behind as technology marches on.

Of course, we realize that it's not as simple as waving a magic upgrade wand and that's that. It's important to understand the way you do business in order to accurately assess how an upgrade will affect your operations. So please contact us and we'll be happy to sit down with you and find ways to implement an upgrade in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible.

With Windows 7, there are easier and faster ways to rename multiple files in one sweep. The first way is to click on a file's name and rename it as usual, then press the "Tab" key to access the next file in the list.

Another way is to select multiple files (press the Ctrl key or Shift key and select the desired files), then right click on the first file and choose "Rename" to give it a new name. The rest of the files will be renamed with the same name. For example, if you name the first file "image", it will become "image (1)" followed by "image (2)" and so on.

OK, here’s another geeky one more for our own reference than anything else. If you are running a Windows 7 workstation on a Server 2003 network (including SBS 2003), the Previous Versions functionality may appear to be broken. You may see either nothing listed in the Previous Versions window, or everything may appear with the same date stamp. Windows XP workstations continue to function correctly.

There is a very quick fix to be applied to the server. Simply delete the following registry key

HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServiceslanmanserverParametersDisableDownLevelTimewarp

No reboot is required. The fix is immediate.

UPDATE: We have had a situation recently where deleting this key changed the symptoms, but did not resolve the problem. In this case we re-added the key, and set the value to “1”, which did resolve the issue successfully.

I have just closed a ticket for a client who was having problems activating Windows 7 on his PC. As a result of these problems, he was getting a warning message popping up claiming that his copy of windows might not be genuine. Obviously, considering we had just sold them multiple activations of Windows 7 under a volume licensing agreement, this was of some concern to them.

The bizarre part is that the license key was legitimate and the workstations were behaving perfectly, except for the fact that they couldn’t check in to Microsoft to activate. The error code they were getting was 0x8007232b, which is apparently related to several problems with activations. In this case however, all that we needed to do was re-enter the activation key and re-submit the activation request. 10 seconds later, the activation was successful! Welcome to the fun world of Microsoft licensing

‘Windows 7′ is the latest release in Microsoft’s long running Windows Operating System family. It replaces the (disappointing) Windows Vista, and not a moment too soon. Released back in 2007, Windows Vista was set to supercede the reliable Windows XP as the standard desktop operating system on Windows computers the world over. Unfortunately Vista was a disapointing release to say the least, causing performance and stability issues for most users, and headaches for tech support staff everywhere. In Microsoft’s defence, Vista was the first release to properly address wide  ranging security issues that had been causing the company no end of bad press for some time. Unfortunately this was overshadowed by the new issues Vista introduced.

The new Windows 7 is what Vista should have been from the start. Both visually and under the hood, Windows 7 shares strong similarities with Vista, to the point where some have nicknamed it Vista Version 2. The good news is that Windows 7..well…actually works. We’ve been running early beta versions of the software at the Garden Shed for some months now, and even with early pre-release versions, a day in front of the computer was a much nicer place to be than with Vista.

WIndows 7 does offer a raft of new features for all levels of user. To our thinking though, an operating system is something that you should hardly even notice. It should just sit there behind the scenes quietly providing you access to your software applications and your data. To that end, Windows 7 is an absolute winner. It’s fast, reliable, and a pleasure to use.

Would we recommend upgrading? To that, an unequivocal “maybe”. If you’re currently running Vista, call us now. The sooner we can stamp out any remaining traces of that problem child, the better! If you’re running Windows XP, which is still quite reliable, there’s no hurry to upgrade. All new computers are now shipping with Windows 7, so as your current systems gradually get retired, Windows 7 will find its way into your organisation, so perhaps just wait for that to happen. Either way, Windows 7 is a strong release from Microsoft, and definitely a change for the better.

So we have a client wanting a new computer running the new Windows 7 operating system. For various reasons the path we’ve taken on this is to take a HP DC7900 preloaded with Vista Business, and take advantage of the ‘free’ upgrade from Vista to Win7 that’s on offer. Check the details, but in this instance it’s an offer from HP on all computers sold with Vista within a certain date range. You fill out details on the website, pay something like $20 for shipping, and a few days later a Windows 7 DVD arrives. Nice.

So the point of the post is that there’s a few different ways to install Windows 7, depending on what you’re installing with, and onto. In this instance the media shipped is technical upgrade media. There’s a great post here on the different methods you can use, but for my part I’ve tried two different methods, both equally quick, easy and successful.

The first method was to boot from the Win7 DVD. Select Custom install (not upgrade), and select the existing Vista partition. You’ll then get a message telling you that the Vista installation will be ‘archived’ then paved with a brand new clean install of Win7. As this is a brand new computer I’m much happier with a ‘clean’ install, given there’s no data, apps, etc, to worry about carrying forward. The DVD hums away for a bit, system reboots a bit, and hey presto a spanking brand new clean install of Win7.

The second method I tried was to boot into Vista, and then run setup.exe from the Win7 DVD. The process was almost identical to the first method I tried, and the results equally as successful.

So bottom line is, doing a ‘clean’ upgrade from Vista to Win7 is remarkably easy and successful.

Quick little post over at BRW on the upcoming release of Windows 7. While one can’t argue with the words, one little bit has been left out. Windows 7 will work! Keep in mind here people that Windows 7 (Win7 to its mates) is the rushed-to-market replacement for Windows Vista, which was universally accepted as the most abysmal attempt at an operating system in the history of the gazillion dollar empire that is Microsoft.

We’ve been running Win7 here at the garden shed for a few months now, and I can tell you it’s actually damn good. There’s not that many new features to get excited about, but it looks good, it’s quick, and it’s stable. In fact it’s running as quick, if not quicker than Windows XP was on the same hardware (please don’t ask me for hard numbers on that folks

So yes, I agree with the BRW on this one, but I’ll add that, for those of us who have suffered through Vista, Win7 is actually an exciting option. Not exciting enough to host a launch party for, mind, but definitely exciting enough to look forward to.