Jonathan's Technology Blog » Windows 7 http://www.jonathancusson.com Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:06:47 +0000 en hourly 1 Why you need regular backup of your computer http://www.jonathancusson.com/2011/03/24/why-you-need-regular-backup-of-your-computer/ http://www.jonathancusson.com/2011/03/24/why-you-need-regular-backup-of-your-computer/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:50:07 +0000 admin http://www.jonathancusson.com/?p=372 ]]> Backup your computer! This is something everybody know but most often you neglect or forget to take car of it. Last Tuesday I got a call from my dad saying that he had a black screen with a blinking white line. He had already tried rebooting and verified that no external drive was connected. Twenty minutes later I was at my parents house and the diagnostic was simple: hard drive failure.

For a lot of people this could result in the complete lost of documents, music and tones of pictures. Worst, if you are a freelancer or working from home you could be put out off business, but why? Microsoft includes a backup and restore tool with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. This tool works well, it’s FREE and takes little time to setup. Even without using this tool, making a copy of your files can be as simple as drag and drop on a USB drive.

Microsoft backup and restore tool allows you to do a complete backup of your computer or select specific folders. You can than schedule it to run, at least WEEKLY!!! That way if the worst happen you only lose a few days of data, not years and Microsoft tool is designed to do a full backup and only backup modified or added content on subsequent run. So, all you need to protect your computer is a few minutes to setup your backup and a USB or eSATA external drive. AT 100$ for 1TB drive there’s no reason why you can’t buy one.

Here’s a video showing how Microsoft Windows 7 Backup and Restore works.

As for my parents, I had already configured Microsoft backup and restore on their Windows 7 PC. I did have to buy a new drive and reinstall all their software but since they have a backup, nothing is lost and all that’s left is to restore on the newly installed system.

So, what are you waiting for? Take a few minutes and save yourself the lost of work and souvenirs!

]]> http://www.jonathancusson.com/2011/03/24/why-you-need-regular-backup-of-your-computer/feed/ 0 Windows 7…The Real Test http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7%e2%80%a6the-real-test/ http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7%e2%80%a6the-real-test/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:15:12 +0000 admin http://www.jonathancusson.com/?p=117 ]]> Windows 7 beta is now available and I could not wait to test it. I already have 3 installations of Windows 7 for intensive testing. I have decided to put Windows 7 trough a really good test.

When Vista came out people complained that it took too much resources and that you needed a powerful computer to run it. Well, I just tested Windows 7 with a 6 years old computer and believe me the performance are surprisingly good even on old PCs. Here is the hardware setup of that machine:

As you can see the system global score is 3.0 but keep in mind this is a 6 years old computer with slower CPU, memory and video card. What is also amazing is that all the hardware was detected and Windows Update to care of installing latest drivers. I have installed Office 2007, Norton 360 version 3(beta), Photoshop CS and Nero 9. Well the performance are good enough to work on it. I am used to very good performance on my main computer (Dual Core T9300, 4GB RAM & Quadro FX 1600 512MB) and I can say that Windows 7 performs well even with older configurations. I even went to a slower configuration with a Pentium 4 2Ghz, 1GB of RAM and a very old ATI R92LE 32MB video card. (don’t ask me how I got this card, I can’t remember) With that, the system got slower but would still be enough to use for Internet navigation, Word and Excel.

The most amazing is that so far I did not get any errors or crashes on that old PC. All of those waiting for a new Windows that offers stability, compatibility and performances are served!

This post was written with Live Writer on Windows 7.
Windows 7 logo

Jonathan

]]> http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7%e2%80%a6the-real-test/feed/ 0 Windows 7 beta now available for download http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7-beta-now-available-for-download/ http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7-beta-now-available-for-download/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 21:29:33 +0000 admin http://www.jonathancusson.com/?p=114 ]]> Here is the direct link to download Windows 7 and get a CD Key. You must register with your Live Profile to access the downloads.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

Windows 7 logo

]]> http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/10/windows-7-beta-now-available-for-download/feed/ 0 Windows 7 beta is here! http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/09/windows-7-beta-is-here/ http://www.jonathancusson.com/2009/01/09/windows-7-beta-is-here/#comments Sat, 10 Jan 2009 03:45:31 +0000 admin http://www.jonathancusson.com/?p=107 ]]> Windows 7 beta is here for TechNet and MSND members. For those of you that don’t have access to these, here is a link for public download. No CD Key but you don’t need it……30 days trial!

Windows 7 logo
http://snipurl.com/9psn8

Jonathan

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