I finally got around to upgrading my partner's Windows Vista laptop at the weekend, and it turned out to be quite a drawn-out process and much more involved than I had anticipated. If Vista throws up this many problems with an in-place upgrade, it's no wonder that Microsoft decided that an upgrade path from XP wasn't worth contemplating.

The upgrade accounted for pretty much all of Sunday afternoon and evening, taking in the region of eight hours from start to finish. With hindsight, a clean install would have been a better option, but the laptop had a number of applications such as Microsoft Office that have been personalised with various settings and options, and it seemed that an in-place upgrade was the way to proceed.

The first thing I did was to backup all documents and files to a network share, as The Boss would not have been impressed if anything had gone wrong and resulted in the loss of any of her work.

Secondly, I downloaded and ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft's website to get some idea of any problems that might be lurking.

This turned out to be a useful tool, so I fully recommend it to anyone planning a similar upgrade. As well as confirming that the laptop (a HP Compaq Presario F500 series) met the minimum requirements for Windows 7, it identified one or two drivers that were not compatible with Windows 7 (see screenshot).

It also recommended removing several applications before the upgrade, including an old version of iTunes, Windows Live Messenger and the Windows Mobile Device Center.

Unfortunately, uninstalling one of the applications caused the laptop's DVD drive to stop working, which put a brake on the upgrade until I could fix it.

The problem was that the application had hooked into the DVD driver, and its uninstall routine had not removed the link. A quick web search provided me with a fix, which involved editing the Registry to remove any reference to the application from the DVD's entry.

With the DVD drive re-instated, I popped in the Windows 7 install disk and kicked off the setup. However, this performed its own compatibility check, which after an extended scan of the computer, threw up a new list of applications and drivers to remove.

One of the applications it identified was Skype, which wasn't actually installed on the laptop, and so caused some head scratching. It turned out the compatibility check had found a bundled Skype installer that HP must have pre-loaded onto the hard drive when the laptop was built.

After removing the new problems and a quick reboot, I re-started the install and waited...and waited...and waited. After copying and expanding the files needed for Windows 7, the installer than scanned for existing applications and files, and this is what really took up a lot of the time, as it eventually reached a grand total of 342,814 items!

Of course, the upgrade was only half complete, as after rebooting into Windows 7, the installer then had to import all the applications and files it had previously identified.

Just as I was about to retire to bed and leave the upgrade running overnight, the installation finished and Windows Vista was finally replaced with shiny new Windows 7, with no loss of data and all vital applications intact.

So far, The Boss is pleased with the upgrade, although she complains that it is still a little slow for her liking, but an improvement on Vista's interminable startup and shutdown times.

The upgrade was thus a success, but not without its share of hitches, and it makes me wonder how less tech-savvy users would cope with a similar scenario. And this was with a Vista laptop bought as new just a couple of years ago, not an ancient XP machine.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on October 28, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (8)

Microsoft doesn't do a lot of hardware, but the stuff it does offer is usually pretty good, and the new range it had on display at a showcase in London today was no exception.

Because of the limited number of new devices, the event itself was a little pitiful, but what they did have was certainly worth noting.

The company seems have to have developed an affinity for curved keyboards, with the latest two being somewhere between an ergonomic 'split' keyboard and the more traditional rectangular layout.

Both the new Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 and the Wireless Comfort Desktop 5000 use the 'Ergonomist Approved Comfort Curve' design, which seems to divide opinion as well as the keyboard.

The Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 is particularly impressive, being very thin and light and includes a separate number pad as well.

For those who like the curved design, the Desktop 5000 was released earlier this month and goes for around £70 while the Mobile Keyboard 6000 is due out early next month and should sell for about £80.

Also on display were two new mice - The Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 and 6000 - both of which feature Microsoft's BlueTrack technology so that they can work on just about any surface.

Both use a really small USB receiver so you don't have to worry about a bulky dongle sticking precariously out the side of your laptop while using the mouse.

Both the multi-coloured 4000 series and the bigger, glossier 6000 are available now for £35 and £45 respectively.

Last but not least is the Lifecam Cinema webcam, a nifty looking auto-focus webcam that can capture in 720p HD and will look good atop just about any PC or laptop screen. The attractive design and high picture quality do come at a price though with the Lifecam Cinema selling for about £70.

We had a chance for a few minutes with each of the devices and all of them seemed to be very good, the picture quality of the webcam was great, the mice were solid and the keyboards had very nice tactile keys - if only Microsoft could design and make its operating systems as well.

Posted by Ian Williams on September 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

The technical preview of Microsoft's Office Web Applications shows that the applications still have a long way to go before being finished - go here for our First Look article.

Word currently only supports viewing of documents, as shown in this screenshot, but the content looks exactly as it would appear if you opened it in the full version of Word.

PowerPoint also shows presentation slides exactly as you would see them in the full PowerPoint client, and you can click to start a slideshow in a new full-screen browser Window. Page transitions are painfully slow unless you have Microsoft's Silverlight runtime installed on your computer.

The most complete of the Office Web Applications is Excel, shown here with an existing spreadsheet open for editing containing a table and an embedded chart. The application has a polished look that make it more closely resemble a full client application than many web-based applications achieve.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on September 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

For those wondering whether Windows 7 will run on a typical netbook, the answer is yes. While testing out Toshiba's NB200 mini laptop, I took the liberty of installing the release version of Microsoft's new operating system and found it runs with no trouble at all.

Interest in Windows 7 on mini laptops - otherwise known as netbooks - was piqued by Microsoft's claim back at the Professional Developer Conference in 2008 that the new platform would run on such small systems.

Currently, these devices are most often shipped out with Windows XP Home edition pre-installed, since Windows Vista is simply too resource hungry to give a satisfactory experience on netbooks.

As Windows 7 is based on the same core code as Vista, many people were understandably sceptical about Microsoft's claim.

Toshiba's NB200 netbook has the typical hardware specifications seen on many other netbooks: single-core Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory and 160GB hard drive, plus a 10in display.

Like most compact laptops, the Toshiba doesn't have a DVD drive, so I used a USB Flash drive instead, first turning it into a bootable drive and then copying the setup files to it.

[A step-by-step guide on how to create a Windows 7 USB install disk is given here on one of Microsoft's blogs. Note that you need a drive at least 4GB in size.]

The install took about half an hour and re-booted the system a couple of times, after which I had a working Windows 7 netbook - see the screenshot above.

I was surprised to find that the Toshiba seemed just as responsive with Windows 7 as it did before the upgrade when running Windows XP.

However, Windows 7 rates the upgraded system with a Windows Experience Index (WEI) of just 1.0 - the lowest score possible. A look at the individual subsystem scores revealed that the integrated graphics in Intel's 945 Express chipset is holding the score down.

This means that playing the latest 3D shoot-'em-up game is probably out of the question, but in reality, most people buy a netbook like this because they are affordable, portable, and are good enough for surfing the web, email, and the odd spot of word processing, rather than for anything fancy.

Nevertheless, I was able to turn on the Aero user interface with its translucency effects (it was disabled by default after installation), and a few checks showed that the netbook was perfectly capable of playing music and video content.

So it seems that Microsoft's promise was no idle boast, and Windows 7 will indeed run perfectly well on a netbook.

Potential buyers should note that if netbooks do ship with Windows 7, the version included may well be the Starter edition, which has a number of limitations such as the Aero user interface disabled.

However, Microsoft has now lifted the earlier restriction that limited the Starter edition to running no more than three concurrent applications.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on September 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

With almost every gadget under the sun packing a Wi-Fi connection it can sometimes feel like a bit of a waste if there isn't a handy hotspot to connect to while you're out and about.

This problem has been partially solved thanks to the USB dongles and mobile data packages for smartphones, but neither of these is particularly useful if the device in question is not a laptop or a phone. Even when it comes to a laptop, the USB dongles require extra software to be installed to set up the connection, so letting a friend or colleague quickly borrow it becomes a laborious process.

Enter Novatel's MiFi, essentially a very small mobile data router that allows several devices to network over Wi-Fi and share a single mobile data connection.

The MiFi unit is about the same size and weight as a deck of playing cards so carrying it around isn't going to add any serious weight to your bag and even popping it into a handbag or laptop case is not a problem.

The device is very minimal, with a single button with a multicolour LED, microUSB port, microSD card slot and a Wi-Fi status indicator.

The LED lets you see the status of the unit, but with five different colours meaning different things depending on whether it's solid or flashing, this can be a bit confusing at first. Pretty much the only colour of any importance is the red as this indicates a low battery or a device error.

One very minor gripe is that the status LED is embedded within the power button which is fine most of the time, but if you're turning the device on or off your finger completely covers the light so it's difficult to tell what's going on.

If you get a MiFi as part of a mobile data deal it will already be set up and so using it is very simple. When switching it on it automatically initiates a mobile data connection and switches on the Wi-Fi. Up to five devices can be wirelessly connected to the MiFi at any time.

At first the Wi-Fi is completely open so any device can connect without a password. There are several profiles available in the settings to allow you to create an encrypted, password protected connection to help ensure security and prevent anyone nearby from piggybacking on your connection.

If you want to save power you can also connect the MiFi via USB and use it just like a traditional mobile data dongle.

The whole device is controlled through a web interface and provides most of the settings you'd expect from a wireless router such as MAC filtering, port filtering and forwarding, connectivity and power management as well as providing details about the battery and the mobile data signal and connection.

The contents of the microSD card can also be accessed through the web interface or as a removable storage device when the MiFi is tethered to a computer.

It would drain the battery faster but we would love to have seen the MiFi offer some kind of sleep mode whereby it powers up and connects to the internet when it detects a Wi-Fi connection. This would allow users to carry the unit around in a bag and not have to worry about digging it out and switching it on every time they want to use it.

Even if you don't have a 3G data connection, the MiFi can be used as a basic network hub allowing you to connect several devices to share information, and the onboard SD card can also be a great way of sharing content.

As with most wireless devices battery life is going to depend a lot on how much data it's handling, so a lot of downloading or connecting several devices will take its toll pretty quickly. That said we managed to easily get several hours of constant use out of a single charge, and average use saw the device lasting around two days between charges. The added bonus is that if the battery dies you can simply tether it to your laptop and use it that way.

The MiFi is a great piece of kit and if you're in the market for a mobile data package we would definitely recommend that you try and get one of these rather than the standard USB dongles included in most packages.

Posted by Ian Williams on August 20, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our recent Top 10 Windows 7 features article on V3.co.uk prompted quite a few responses from readers, with several asking why we didn't compare Microsoft's new version of Windows with XP, as this is the operating system most people will currently be using.

That article was actually a light-hearted look at what we like about Windows 7, now that the code will soon be available, but if you want a brief opinion on moving up from XP, read on.

Firstly, Windows 7 is much less resource-heavy than Windows Vista, but it still requires a minimum 1GHz processor, 1GB memory and at least 16GB free space on your hard drive.

This level of hardware is easily surpassed by just about any PC bought within the last couple of years, but if you have been clinging onto XP since before Vista was launched, you're probably better off investing in a new box with Windows 7 rather than installing it on your existing system.

Secondly, how does Windows 7 compare with XP? Well, as several comments to our article pointed out, Windows 7 is much closer to Vista, both under the hood and in its user interface.

But don't let that put you off. With Windows 7, Microsoft has addressed most of the things that were really annoying about Vista - such as its sluggish performance and the pop-up nag prompts - then added in some neat extras as well. This is why many experts regard Windows 7 as "Vista done right".

On the other hand, if you have held off from upgrading to Vista because of compatibility problems with software you are running on XP, then Windows 7 isn't going to solve those problems. As just pointed out, it is based on the same core code as Vista.

Microsoft currently has a beta release out of a tool called Windows XP Mode that offers Windows 7 users an XP virtual machine in which to run any problem applications. However, this requires even more memory (2GB recommended) and only works with AMD or Intel processors that have hardware support for virtualisation. It is unlikely to deliver a satisfactory experience for playing games.

That said, I've been running Windows 7 on a laptop ever since the first beta was released, with one or two applications that were written for XP, and encountered no problems at all.

If you want my personal opinion, Windows 7 is a worthy successor to XP, although it may take a short while for upgraders to get used to where some things are in the new user interface.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on July 31, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (11)

Microsoft is set to make Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) available as an update rollup for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) from August 25.

The move means that IT departments using WSUS to control deployment of updates across their network need to be ready ahead of this date.

Microsoft announced the move in a recent posting on its IEBlog site, explaining that organisations which have configured WSUS to auto-approve update rollup packages will have IE8 automatically installed onto all compatible systems unless they take action to forestall this.

IE8 is generally regarded as a great improvement over earlier releases of the browser, offering better security and greater compliance with published web standards. It also comes with a slew of new group policy settings to allow administrators to control settings and behaviour via Active Directory.

However, it is possible that IE8 may prove incompatible with some web-based enterprise applications, or that IT departments may not yet be ready to roll out the new browser.

Microsoft's IEBlog site has instructions for companies that use WSUS, but who wish to have control over when IE8 gets deployed on their network.

IE8 is compatible with Windows XP systems with Service Pack 2, XP Professional x64 Edition, 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on July 2, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Windows XP Mode that Microsoft is planning for Windows 7 does allow you to access applications straight from the Start menu as promised, and it also enables you to save files straight to the hard drive of the Windows 7 host, I can confirm.

However, in my tests at least, performance was not entirely impressive, with a distinct lag between keys being pressed and the application inside the virtual machine responding.

Windows XP Mode, for those that don't know, is a tool designed to help users moving to Windows 7 if they have any compatibility issues with applications they are currently running.

Still currently in beta, it sets up a virtual Windows XP environment using Microsoft's Virtual PC software.

Users can then install applications inside the virtual machine, which will be available from the  Start menu of Windows 7 afterwards.

The first hurdle a prospective user faces is hardware requirements. Not only does Windows XP Mode require at least 1.25GB of memory (2GB preferred), but it will only run on systems with hardware acceleration for virtualisation. This means you must have an Intel processor with VT-x extensions or AMD processor with AMD-V technology. These must also be enabled in the system's Bios firmware.

I tested Windows XP Mode on a Lenovo ThinkPad X300, which was already being used as a testbed for the Windows 7 Beta. This has a Core 2 Duo L7100 processor that supports Intel's VT-x, but I had to enable this in the Bios.

After installing the new Windows 7 Release Candidate, I downloaded and installed the Windows XP Mode installer, which turned out to be about 445MB in size. Users can also now download it here.

After installation, a new Virtual PC folder appeared in the Start menu, but clicking on the 'Virtual Windows XP' option revealed that Virtual PC itself had yet to be installed. Fortunately, this was automatically downloaded, and a short while later I was fixed up with a pre-configured XP environment.

At this stage, the virtual machine has no applications other than those that come with Windows XP. To install applications, you need to fire up the virtual machine in its normal mode, where the XP screen appears as a window on the Windows 7 desktop (see screenshot).

As you can see, the XP machine automatically maps to the drives available on the Windows 7 machine, allowing you to install software by DVD or hard disk, or by downloading from the Internet.

For test purposes, I downloaded and installed the latest version of the OpenOffice.org suite in my virtual machine, then closed it down. As you can see from the screenshot alongside, the applications now appear in a sub menu on the Windows 7 Start menu.

Clicking an application name starts the virtual machine in the background, but all you will see is the application itself, as if it was running natively on Windows 7. The giveaway is that the application window retains the look and feel of XP, as you can see in the final screenshot below.

The good part about Windows XP Mode is that you can create a document, as I did in OpenOffice Writer, and save it to the My Documents folder on the Windows 7 machine along with all my other files.

The downside is the virtual machine's performance. I found that as I typed text into Writer, nothing would happen for several seconds, whereupon all the characters I had typed suddenly splurged across the screen in one go. This is quite off-putting, and I would hope that Microsoft will address this before the final release is made available.

If you have an application that just won't run under Windows 7, then this solution will get you by, although I personally have found very few applications that don't work with the new platform. However, it remains to be seen whether end users will be satisfied with this. Waiting for an updated version of your application is still likely to be the best option.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on May 6, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6)

Will the Windows XP Mode compatibility tool Microsoft plans to provide for Windows 7 prove a boon to those worried about application compatibility, or is it just a half-hearted kludge to try and convince XP die-hards to upgrade, as some observers believe?

For those not up to speed, Windows XP Mode will be a tool that users can download for Windows 7 that basically provides a pre-configured instance of XP inside a virtual machine. Any software not compatible with Windows 7 can instead be run in this.

A lot will depend upon how XP Mode is implemented, but getting a straight answer from Microsoft is not always an easy matter, as it turns out in this case.

When I met with the company, one question I wanted to know is where document files ended up if you hit the save button in an application running in XP Mode. Would it just go onto the hard drive inside the virtual machine, or has Microsoft been clever and allowed XP Mode applications to map to folders on the host machine?

This is something that Parallels has already implemented in its Desktop for Mac product, which lets Mac users run Windows applications. It means that users don't have to worry about moving documents into the virtual machine in order to edit them with Windows applications.

Has Microsoft done the same with XP Mode? Here is the response I finally got from the company;

"Windows XP Mode is the combination of two features. The first part is a pre-packaged virtual Windows XP environment. The second is Windows Virtual PC, which is used to run the virtual Windows XP environment. Customers can install their applications into Windows XP Mode using typical installation processes such as downloading from the Web or using the product CD. Once installed, the applications are automatically available on the Windows 7 Start Menu and can be launched just like any Windows 7 program. Optionally, these Windows XP applications can be pinned to the Windows 7 Task Bar and launched using just a single click from the Windows 7 desktop."

Like a response during Prime Minister's Question Time in Parliament, this carefully avoids addressing the issue in hand. However, other sources on the web seem to suggest that Microsoft hasn't gone this far, meaning that XP Mode is likely to have a separate file system from the host system. If so, this would be a shame and renders it much less useful than it otherwise would be as a compatibility tool.

I hope to soon have the answer - either by clarification from Microsoft, or by testing the beta of Windows XP Mode and finding out for myself.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on April 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Service Pack 2 (SP2) update for Office 2007 that Microsoft is set to release on 28 April will introduce a number of changes, with the most significant of these affecting file format support.

For customers concerned about file interoperability, SP2 will add support for version 1.1 of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) specifications, enabling users to open and edit word processor, spreadsheet and presentation documents distributed in the latest version of these open standard formats.

However, perhaps more important is the addition of the 'Save As PDF' function in SP2, which means that users no longer have to install this separately in order to output documents as an Acrobat file. This is widely used for distributing documents because it is a cross-platform standard. Microsoft is also adding support for XPS, its own rival for PDF, enabling Office users to output in both these formats.

According to Microsoft, users can also expect to see some performance improvements, such as faster startup of Outlook, improved fidelity when printing and in PDF and XPS documents, and better handling of graphic-heavy documents.

However, SP2 will also include updates to some of the server-based products included in Microsoft's broader Office System. For example, SharePoint Services and Excel Services will be updated to make them compatible with a broader range of web browsers, while the usual slew of bug fixes will address issues such as reliability of large searches in Search Server.

As usual, the number of changes that will be introduced in this update runs to a very long list, and Microsoft said it will have full details when SP2 is available.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on April 21, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)