André Fischer

First Steps with Windows 7

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my iMac’s hard disk packed it in and I had to replace it. Once I had restored it, I was faced with the question of what to do about the Boot Camp partition I had on it before.

I used to have a Windows XP partition, essentially because I refused to install the utter horror that is Vista; but now, I had to re-think. I’ve ordered Windows 7 Ultimate, but have yet to receive it. That’s when I made an interesting discovery:

You don’t need to enter a Product Key when installing Windows 7! Contrary to all previous versions of Windows, you can actually skip entering the Product Key during installation — you just have to enter it within the 30-day grace period Microsoft gives you for product activation. If you don’t do this, your Windows installation will die a horrible death, and you may have to reinstall everything.

So this is what I did. I got hold of a Windows 7 Ultimate DVD and installed the 64-bit version on my Boot Camp partition. After some fiddling getting the Apple-specific drivers (for Bluetooth, Apple Keyboard, built-in iSight etc.) in there, I had a perfectly-running Windows 7 installation.

The first thing I noticed was how easy the whole thing had been. Almost as easy as installing the Mac side, in fact. And, compared to my girlfriend’s PC, which is a considerably faster and bigger machine than my ageing iMac, the sheer speed of 7 versus the Vista Ultimate running on her box just blew me away.

In fact, purely subjectively (I don’t have any way to benchmark this anymore), I’d say 7 reacts just as fast as XP ever did on that machine. Faster, if I take into account the software rot my XP installation had inevitably suffered since being installed.

And 7 recognised the iMac’s Macintosh OS-formatted partitions off the bat, making it that much easier to shuffle documents back and forth between the two partitions! Hooray!

Next, I’ll be:

• Reinstalling some of my games under 7, and seeing how they run compared to XP, and
• Creating a Parallels VM based on the Boot Camp partition, to see how wellthat runs inside of OS X.

And if I don’t forget, I’ll be posting about these experiences on here.

Never thought I’d say this, but thank you, Microsoft, for getting an OS out there that doesn’t totally suck! ;)

I Love Time Machine!

So my iMac’s hard disk packed it in. It was strange, the machine started getting slower and slower on startup (under OS X – under the Windows Boot Camp partition, it didn’t seem to have that problem), until it then went to a strange mode of going to sleep while starting up.

Long story short, I looked around for the Apple dealer closest to home (Echallens), and found Comac in Yverdon-les-Bains. They’re located just opposite the train station, so there’s handy parking really near by. A definite advantage when you’re wandering about town with a 24” iMac slung under your arm!

They diagnosed the machine and installed a new hard disk for the paltry sum of CHF 250 (90 of which was for the actual installation. Given how much of a bitch this is, I think it’s very reasonable.

Upon getting the machine home, I immediately plugged all its disks and other goodies back in, and am now restoring it from Time Machine.

I must say, having that tool just chugging away in the background, and never having to think about backing up, is a total boon. I love it, I love it, I love it!