{"id":844,"date":"2009-11-04T00:01:07","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T07:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=844"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:39:04","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:39:04","slug":"my-windows-7-upgrade-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=844","title":{"rendered":"My Windows 7 Upgrade Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, I took the plunge. My test computer was stripped of it’s Windows Vista-ness and now has Windows 7 installed. It wasn’t as painful as I was dreading.
\n
\nSo far I’ve updated two of my titles to include Windows 7. They are the 12th Edition of PCs For Dummies<\/em> (which should be out any day now), and the 4th Edition of Laptops For Dummies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To write those books, I installed the Windows 7 beta on my desktop test machine as well as my Tablet PC. In both cases, I added a new partition and installed Windows 7 on that partition; the computers continued to run Windows Vista on the main partition.<\/p>\n

Eventually, as these things happen, the Win7 beta expired. I didn’t have a product key \u2014 that long series of numbers and letters you have to type in to “register” Windows.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, my publisher supplied me with a product key for my Tablet PC, so I could continue to work on Laptops For Dummies<\/em>. But on the desktop, my copy of Win7 refused to cooperate. I could use it, but the desktop went black and the program nagged me constantly about inputting that product key.<\/p>\n

So I went to the store and bought a Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t cheap.<\/p>\n

The process went well: Before installation, I was warned about which programs on my computer wouldn’t work with Windows 7. There were only a few utilities that were suspect, none of which I really used, so I uninstalled them. No biggie.<\/p>\n

The upgrade took a long time, which is typical. Eventually Windows 7 popped up on the screen and I was set.<\/p>\n

I must say that this was perhaps the easiest and least painful Windows upgrade I’ve ever done. That’s unusual, of course. In my books I recommend against upgrading Windows, mostly because things just don’t work right after the upgrade. This time was different.<\/p>\n

Then again, it could have just been me. I’d still recommend not<\/em> upgrading just because I don’t know every PC and every situation. It’s just best to wait and get Windows 7 with a new PC.<\/p>\n

Next time I’ll offer some more Windows 7 insights.<\/p>\n

PS.<\/strong> There are other Windows 7 upgrades that are cheaper than the Ultimate upgrade. Costco has some Windows Home Premium upgrades at about $100. Home Premium is a good version of Windows, suitable for most folks. The Ultimate version I bought has all the bells and whistles, which I don’t really use but need in order to write my books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I took the plunge. My test computer was stripped of it’s Windows Vista-ness and now has Windows 7 installed. It wasn’t as painful as I was dreading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4200,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/4200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}