December Mailbox: Windows 7 woes

Letters to the editor.

Ted Gibbons | Tuesday, January 26 2010

I thought I'd share my experience upgrading my Vista Business laptop to Windows 7 to provide a more balanced view than your rose-tinted upgrade article in the November issue of PC World. I’m one of those few people who haven’t had any major issues with Vista. Nevertheless, I thought I’d give Windows 7 a try, despite the ridiculously expensive $500 cost of an upgrade version.

I did a full computer backup (thank god!) and updated all my drivers, then ran the compatibility test and found everything checked out fine with the exception of my Logitech camera software, which I removed.
Six hours later I had Windows 7 ready to run. It loaded a VGA monitor driver – somehow it couldn’t recognise that I had a widescreen display with NVIDIA graphics. Nevertheless, it loaded my desktop just fine…and then I got the blue screen of death, a core dump, a message that I might have mismatched memory, and the computer rebooted itself. I tried various things to make the system run, restoring my PC and then reloading 7 on three different occasions. Nothing worked. I am now happily back to Vista, but I have a very expensive Windows 7 disk lying on my desk. The moral of my story is that if you want to spend $500 moving from Vista to Windows 7, go out and spend it as a down-payment on a new computer!
Linda Bowen, Wellington

Why Windows 7?
Is there anybody else out there who has had a positive, trouble-free experience Windows Vista?
I, for one, find Vista responsive and believe OSX has nothing over the eye-candy of the Aero theme.

I’ve had no BSODs with Vista, compared to hundreds with XP (well almost hundreds), and everything I’ve put on Vista has worked. I regularly surf the internet and have never had a virus.

Why has Vista been painted as such a lemon? Am I lucky or is this just a very successful smear campaign orchestrated by Apple.
Jordan Spiers, Papakura

Happy with 7
I am a first time reader of your magazine and have just loaded Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit as my OS. I used XP right up until now and have installed 7 on a second internal 250GB hard drive so I can boot from that and still have XP on the main drive.

The old man missed the pig and has taken up the torch (lol), as your November cover shows. I am very pleased with Windows 7 and have had no problems so far. I think it’s a good OS but I’m no geek, just Joe User. Win 7 has my vote as the best thing since Windows XP SP3.
John Copley, via email

Driver education
In November’s Press F1 it is recommended that a user gets device driver updates from Windows Update. I disagree with that advice due to the fact that getting updates from Microsoft often causes more problems than it fixes. It is much better to get updates from the device’s maker.

Also, another reader is advised to update drivers for an optical drive, yet the best thing to do is simply to replace it with another a good DVD drive can be bought online for under $70. I’ve found that drivers for DVD or CD drives rarely if ever fix an optical problem.
Gary Willis, via email

Killing cookies
I read Geoff Palmer’s October Consumer Watch column on Flash cookies and decided to test his advice. I found nothing in the folder Geoff directed readers to, so I opened up a YouTube video with the share folder open and, voilà, a Clearspring (clearspring.com) folder instantly appeared – two folders, actually. I then closed the video and browser window to see if my installed IE Privacy Keeper software would remove the cookie folders, which it did.

However, I do wonder if they’re really gone even though I can’t physically see them. I have spread the word around regarding Flash cookies, but most folks I work with have no idea what cookies are or what they do.
D Baldwin, United Arab Emirates

Costing the cloud
Jeska Innes’ jaunty Education 2.0 avoids putting readers to sleep with its racy mix of input, but something about the maths of school broadband nagged me last month as I read it.

When cloud computing is considered, we find that each child will upload about a gigabyte of photos, videos and documents each month. If we allow about $1 per gigabyte of data uploaded, we rapidly get through our IT budget for the year. Three hundred kids uploading a gigabyte per month works out to $3,600 for the year. These kinds of numbers will be hard to find from school budgets, especially when staff won’t know what the charges are for.

Costs will really explode if kids decide to edit video in the cloud. It’s similar to the inkjet boom when schools got inkjet printers and kids emptied the cartridges within minutes, churning out copies of their favourite pop-stars.

The internet is a bin to pour money into, and the faster it is, the more money schools will lose.
Graham Philip, Taupo

Graham wins an 8GB Ironkey Personal from Duo New Zealand for letter of the month.

Done roamin’
I learned a big lesson last month which cost me $300 for five days in Australia. Don’t use GPS on your iPhone. In Sydney I hired a car because I wanted to see a bit more than just the city. I used 26MB of data downloading maps to my iPhone. Next time I will buy an app.
Dave Candlish, Wellington

GPS or no GPS
I’d like to comment on your Sygic Mobile Maps review in the November Issue. As of November 1 it is actually illegal to use GPS applications on your mobile phone while driving.

“Under the new law, that would be illegal, according to Transport Ministry spokesman John Summers: “The Road User Amendment Rule 2009 means drivers will not be able to look at a navigation aid on a mobile phone when driving, even if it is mounted on the dashboard.

“You can use a mobile phone held in a cradle while driving, but only to make, receive or terminate a phone call. You cannot use them in any other way, such as reading a GPS map, reading email or consulting an electronic diary.”

The restriction will only apply to navigation systems with mobile phone functionality.”
So using Sygic Mobile Maps is definitely not the safer option when driving.
Chen Yu, Waitakere

After the statement you quote was made, communications minister Steven Joyce stepped in to make an amendment to the law that would allow GPS to be used on mobile phones as long as the device was mounted on your dash and you touched it infrequently – Ed.

Paper plus
After reading many PC World magazines and not knowing where they manage to get to, I would enjoy having a PDF version of the magazine which I could easily read as an e-book on my computer. Another alternative is to have a number in the magazine which would be required to download the PDF from the website. I’m sure there are many other readers who would enjoy having a PDF or something similar in addition to the hard copy of the magazine. A PDF download on it’s own from pcworld.co.nz for a small fee would save on paper and would be better suited for many of PCW’s readers.
Jethro Burr, Nelson

We’re certainly thinking of moving in that direction, Jethro. At this point we’re considering a Zinio-style (zinio.com) offering – Ed.

Job done
Your team really raised the bar in the November 2009 issue of PC World.

From the catchy cover to the thorough test-drive of Windows 7, and the right balance of riveting news from home and abroad, I was thoroughly impressed. Keep up the great work!
Lawrence Ritchie, via email