Adventures in Windows 7 style
Some weeks ago I got into a miserable situation, at least for me. Some people asked to set up their laptop used by whole family.They wanted Windows. Of course 7 is the best. Home Premium is fully enough for home PC.
I set it up as well as I could. It took a week of setting and reading the Internet. I had not installed Windows for more than 4 years and the preivious one was XP.
In year 2007 I bought a MacBook and left the worries about losing data after reinstall, viruses and antiviruses etc. behind. It is year 2011 and I am writing this blog entry on the same MacBook Black :)
Everyone who installs Windows frequently has his/her PACKAGE of settings and programs(and their settings) to install. I needed to collect my Package from scratch.
I talked about it with a colleague who is a former system administrator and an amateur right now that he has a huge and specific Package for himself and for people he helps. He is sure that default Windows installation is worth a crap and that before he is "made it better" or set it up it is not just unusable, but even dangerous to use.My Package is much closer to default. He said ironicaly that I am totally lazy creep if I want to buy a car and just drive it. But that is exactly what I want! I do not want to bould a garage, to set a full car repair service up, including buying a bunch of tools and learning how to use them, to buy a car, to disassemble and put together at least half of it better than te manufacturer was able to do and then be able to drive it! As Mac user I strongly believe that buying a new car and servicing it once in a year should be enough for at least 4 years of nice driving.It seems I have much lower self esteem than that colleague, because I do not think that I know Windows better than people who work for Microsoft full time for a very good $. He really thinks that his default settings is much better than those made by Microsoft. On some things I could not disagree. If a PC really needs regular disk cleanup and defragmentation why those things are not sheduled by default like automatic updates? Why there is not very easy automatic way to uninstall programs (with ALL of their files) that are not used for 2 years? Why there is not an easy way to uninstall programs manually with ALL their files (which are not common to other installed programs), uninstalling by Add/Remove Programs leaves abunch of junk files behind. There really are a lot of decisions left for the user. The first decision to make was should I divide HD in partitions. I decided that is safer and promisies faster working PC to do so, to have 2 partitions: one, smaller, for system and the rest for user files. If HD is 640GB (with Ubuntu, with W7 just almost 600GB), what would you do?
The main reason was not to lose user data -the irreplacable family pictures and documents made by them - if W7 catches a bad virus and needs disk formatting and clean install. A red on the Internet that Windows needs at least 16% of it's system disk free at all times. 16% of 600 is 6 times more than 16% of 100 :)
I decided to put programs on system partition, too, because some programms allow installation only on the system partition (its a jam to keep programms in two different places) and we should install all programms again after system reinstall anyway to make them work prperly. The second biggest question was which antivirus software to choose. Which one is best for you?Those people were cheapstakes - they wont pay for an antivirus whatever I would told them. That ment I needed a free or stolen option. It did not seem safe to me to use a stolen antivirus which might be full of viruses itself. Thats why I chose from free options.
As the ex-administator colleague later said, that the best option is having two antivirus softwares installed. One that runs automatically and regulary and another one to use just in safe mode while PC is disconnected from network in case you feel there is a virus in your system and the everyday antivirus has not caught it. The third setback was desire for "free" software and making sure it is not full of viruses and is going to update properly. Moving user directories to second partition was not an easy thing to do - "the legal way", the one Microsoft supports, is to write the location to every diectory, every user has ~5 directories and I had 4 users to make. It seems Microsoft thinks that the better way is not to divide HD, they even have an Archive install like Mac (that means keeping old files after reinstallation of the system). Which option was better for user?There are a lot of unclear things about Windows. Thats why users are still not ready to install by themselves even default installation is very easy - just sit by and some times press [OK]. Microsoft even offers its own free antivirus and some of it's reviews are not bad. But all other manufacturers of antiviruses claim that their antiviruses is better. Is that true? What is true here at all? Now, are you pulling your hair out in compassion to those poor people who let me set up their PC? Don't. They are using their laptop happily. Never complained. Children are playing games and parents are writing emails and documents, when they get children off their games. They are satisfied with it. Why in a hell Microsoft could not have good enough default installation? Why should I think about partition sizes? Why could not system decide for the specific sizes of hard disks itself? If Microsoft's antivirus software is good (is it? non-Microsoft reviews sais it is OK, but almost all others are better) and free why is it not installed with the system? Why the system is not secure enough that it needs an antivirus at all?Why should user bother herself about files left behind by "uninstalled" software? Why Disk Cleanup and other maintenance programs that every PC needs is not sheduled like Automatic Updates? Or why there is no clear statement that not every PC needs them?Why IE is the worst browser for Windows (every internet review I red said so)? Thats why I am staying with Mac even after I spent a week gathering my set of programs and settings for Windows 7 (the best Windows that Microsoft has ever made, IMO).
I set it up as well as I could. It took a week of setting and reading the Internet. I had not installed Windows for more than 4 years and the preivious one was XP.
In year 2007 I bought a MacBook and left the worries about losing data after reinstall, viruses and antiviruses etc. behind. It is year 2011 and I am writing this blog entry on the same MacBook Black :)
Everyone who installs Windows frequently has his/her PACKAGE of settings and programs(and their settings) to install. I needed to collect my Package from scratch.
I talked about it with a colleague who is a former system administrator and an amateur right now that he has a huge and specific Package for himself and for people he helps. He is sure that default Windows installation is worth a crap and that before he is "made it better" or set it up it is not just unusable, but even dangerous to use.My Package is much closer to default. He said ironicaly that I am totally lazy creep if I want to buy a car and just drive it. But that is exactly what I want! I do not want to bould a garage, to set a full car repair service up, including buying a bunch of tools and learning how to use them, to buy a car, to disassemble and put together at least half of it better than te manufacturer was able to do and then be able to drive it! As Mac user I strongly believe that buying a new car and servicing it once in a year should be enough for at least 4 years of nice driving.It seems I have much lower self esteem than that colleague, because I do not think that I know Windows better than people who work for Microsoft full time for a very good $. He really thinks that his default settings is much better than those made by Microsoft. On some things I could not disagree. If a PC really needs regular disk cleanup and defragmentation why those things are not sheduled by default like automatic updates? Why there is not very easy automatic way to uninstall programs (with ALL of their files) that are not used for 2 years? Why there is not an easy way to uninstall programs manually with ALL their files (which are not common to other installed programs), uninstalling by Add/Remove Programs leaves abunch of junk files behind. There really are a lot of decisions left for the user. The first decision to make was should I divide HD in partitions. I decided that is safer and promisies faster working PC to do so, to have 2 partitions: one, smaller, for system and the rest for user files. If HD is 640GB (with Ubuntu, with W7 just almost 600GB), what would you do?
The main reason was not to lose user data -the irreplacable family pictures and documents made by them - if W7 catches a bad virus and needs disk formatting and clean install. A red on the Internet that Windows needs at least 16% of it's system disk free at all times. 16% of 600 is 6 times more than 16% of 100 :)
I decided to put programs on system partition, too, because some programms allow installation only on the system partition (its a jam to keep programms in two different places) and we should install all programms again after system reinstall anyway to make them work prperly. The second biggest question was which antivirus software to choose. Which one is best for you?Those people were cheapstakes - they wont pay for an antivirus whatever I would told them. That ment I needed a free or stolen option. It did not seem safe to me to use a stolen antivirus which might be full of viruses itself. Thats why I chose from free options.
As the ex-administator colleague later said, that the best option is having two antivirus softwares installed. One that runs automatically and regulary and another one to use just in safe mode while PC is disconnected from network in case you feel there is a virus in your system and the everyday antivirus has not caught it. The third setback was desire for "free" software and making sure it is not full of viruses and is going to update properly. Moving user directories to second partition was not an easy thing to do - "the legal way", the one Microsoft supports, is to write the location to every diectory, every user has ~5 directories and I had 4 users to make. It seems Microsoft thinks that the better way is not to divide HD, they even have an Archive install like Mac (that means keeping old files after reinstallation of the system). Which option was better for user?There are a lot of unclear things about Windows. Thats why users are still not ready to install by themselves even default installation is very easy - just sit by and some times press [OK]. Microsoft even offers its own free antivirus and some of it's reviews are not bad. But all other manufacturers of antiviruses claim that their antiviruses is better. Is that true? What is true here at all? Now, are you pulling your hair out in compassion to those poor people who let me set up their PC? Don't. They are using their laptop happily. Never complained. Children are playing games and parents are writing emails and documents, when they get children off their games. They are satisfied with it. Why in a hell Microsoft could not have good enough default installation? Why should I think about partition sizes? Why could not system decide for the specific sizes of hard disks itself? If Microsoft's antivirus software is good (is it? non-Microsoft reviews sais it is OK, but almost all others are better) and free why is it not installed with the system? Why the system is not secure enough that it needs an antivirus at all?Why should user bother herself about files left behind by "uninstalled" software? Why Disk Cleanup and other maintenance programs that every PC needs is not sheduled like Automatic Updates? Or why there is no clear statement that not every PC needs them?Why IE is the worst browser for Windows (every internet review I red said so)? Thats why I am staying with Mac even after I spent a week gathering my set of programs and settings for Windows 7 (the best Windows that Microsoft has ever made, IMO).
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