DACS General Meeting
Meeting Review:
March 2012: Owning Windows

By Bruce Preston

You’ve just acquired a Windows 7 machine.  What next?

At the March general meeting Rob Limbaugh asked that question, and provided the answer – “Take ownership!”  Just as you make minor adjustments or customizations to a car – seat position, mirror alignment, radio station selections, a computer operating system needs to be adjusted to meet your preferences and needs.

Since we have had previous sessions on Windows 7, Rob did not spend much time differentiating the various Windows 7 releases.  He simplified it to three types – Windows 7 Home Premium for most users, Windows 7 Professional for commercial environments that require participation in a domain, and Windows 7 Ultimate for those who need “the works” including all of the multi-media functions.  He then touched briefly upon the differences between the 32-bit releases and the 64-bit releases, and the need to make sure that you have the required drivers for peripherals, most notably printers and scanners.

Rob then moved on to cleaning out unneeded software that is often pre-installed on a computer.  This includes free trial or short-subscription software such as anti-virus.  In an opinion he shares with many the anti-virus software that is often bundled with a computer is draconian – it is as burdensome and obtuse as to make the computer hard to use.  He highly recommended the Avast! Home free edition.  In similar fashion he suggests that the Windows firewall is sufficient for home use.

Rob then went on to some recommended 3rd party software.  Much of it is freeware. Recuva – lets you restore files accidently deleted, even if you have emptied the recycle bin. Note that this must be installed before you delete any files, as the process of installation could over-write space once used by a file that you want to restore. Adobe Acrobat Reader – this one is rather large. There are also smaller utilities:
Adobe Flash Player, Apple QuickTime, PrimoPDF – a virtual printer that lets you create PDF files, OpenOffice.org’s OpenOffice Suite – provides the functionality of Microsoft Office, TrueCrypt – encrypts sensitive files, Notepad++ - a feature-rich plain text editor, and PaintDotNet – an image editor that will handle most of your needs.

Rob went on to discuss updates.  He prefers that you disable the automatic updating of applications (other than anti-virus) and configure for manual acceptance of updates.  In this mode, the package will tell you that an update is available, but you have the option of accepting, deferring, or ignoring.  He pointed out that this is highly recommended for a machine that is ‘mission critical’ where a defective driver updates of; say, a high-performance sound or video card could disable the machine.  He prefers to wait about two weeks.  He suggested the restricted update mechanism for products by Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft.

The next topic covered was system and personal file locations.  There are now two folders for installing program files – 32-bit applications have a folder with “x86)” in the path.  The old Documents and Settings/username folder structure is gone, it is now Users/usernmame.  There are also subtle changes – the pseudo folder My Documents is now just Documents and so forth.  Documents has been expanded to include Media, Temp, and Download folders.  Rob touched the topic of system variables such as %SYSTEM%, %WINDIR% which have been in Windows for some time, but are not more important as they provide a mechanism whereby older applications that previously may have been hard-wired for system locations will still work.

User account control has been changed from Vista.  UAC was ‘in your face’ considerably more in Vista; the Windows 7 implementation has been streamlined and made more user-friendly.  Autorun which launched application when a CD was inserted has been disabled by default (as it was in XP SP3) and now asks “What do you want to do?”

Some things that you may have used in XP or Vista have disappeared.  For example, Windows Movie Maker is gone with no replacement.  Other things are still there but look totally different.  A prime example of this is the Control Panel.  It is now highly categorized.  However, if you miss the old control panel you have several options.  The first is to change the “VIEW” option; there is a way to get a one-line per function listing.  Alternatively, the SEARCH box immediately above the start button will let you find what you want.  For example, typing ODBC will get you to what you previously had to enter as Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC).  By the way, the button labeled START is gone, now it is just the round button at the bottom left!

An important area in the system is the Security Center.  It is here that you specify how the machine is to handle the updates to the operating system from Microsoft, such as those that are released on “Patch Tuesday” (2nd Monday of the month.)  He suggests the “Let me choose” option.

Rob took the occasional question from the floor and concluded with a Q&A session.  All in all there was more than enough information provided such that you should be able to make Windows 7 “yours”.