Microsoft has confirmed that it plans to release Windows 7 on October 22, and that final development on the product will come to a close by the end of July. Earlier, Microsoft had said that it was aiming for a Q4 release and indicated that Windows 7 would be on store shelves prior to the December holidays. For users who purchase a computer loaded with Windows Vista shortly before the Windows 7 release, Microsoft will offer either a free or low-cost upgrade to Windows 7. The company will also offer an upgrade path from Vista Home Premium. The company does not plan to offer an upgrade path from Vista Home Basic.

Windows 7 To Follow Vista’s Version Path

The company does plan to offer a number of Windows 7 versions, including Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate, taking essentially the same approach it did with Windows Vista. Drivers for Windows Vista should be largely compatible with Windows 7 but the availability of drivers for Windows Vista is still causing some headaches for Microsoft.

Driver Detective can help you manage your Windows drivers. The utility will locate, download and install the correct drivers for your installed hardware. This is a major improvement over Windows’ automatic install program, which often chooses the wrong driver for a piece of hardware. Driver Detective can work in conjunction with Windows Update, however, to ensure that you always have the latest drivers for your computer. Driver Detective will also ensure that you don’t miss critical driver updates, something that can happen with Windows Update.

Driver updates are monitored automatically as well. When a new driver is made available, Driver Detective will locate, download and install that, too. You never need to worry about your drivers being out-of-date. Driver Detective can also recognize those times when a correctly installed driver becomes corrupted, or is accidentally deleted. No worries. Driver Detective will find and replace the non-working or missing driver.

Knowing that your drivers are properly installed, functioning and up-to-date eliminates one potential problem spot for your computer. Having a reliable driver monitoring program can be especially helpful if you’re not technically savvy. Driver problems can occur as the result of a security or operating system update, incorrect driver selection, corruption or accidental deletion.

Driver Detective protects against all of these issues seamlessly. You’ll always have the most up-to-date drivers for your hardware. When problems do occur, you can quickly eliminate driver errors as the source. Consider Driver Detective to be low-cost, always-available technical support for your Windows computer.

Photo Credit: Daniel F. Pigatto

Microsoft picked a winning strategy when it decided to offer the Windows 7 Release Candidate free of charge, along with a one-year usage license. To date, millions of users have downloaded the free update, and some analysts estimate that it now accounts for about one percent of all installed operating systems.

Know What You’re Getting Before You Install Windows 7 RC

The freebie isn’t without some issues, however. If you want to install Windows 7 RC, you’ll need to give up the operating system you have. Installing the release candidate isn’t a matter of installing it on top of whatever you’re running. The required “fresh” installation of Windows 7 RC means that you’ll lose all of your applications and settings.

You’ll need to reinstall everything once you’ve got the new OS loaded.
Microsoft also says that there will be no “upgrade” from the release candidate to the actual release, meaning that you’ll have to do another install. Windows 7 RC has other potentially irritating “features” you’ll want to be aware of. The release candidate license expires on June 1, 2010, and when Microsoft says “expires” it means “expires.” Your system will no longer boot on the release candidate after that point, and you’ll need to upgrade or revert to a licensed version of the OS.

Beginning on March 1, 2010, installed versions of the Windows 7 release candidates will start to reboot every two hours. By itself, this will be a tremendous nuisance, but it should also assure you that Microsoft plans to have a fully operational version of Windows 7 on the market by that time. If you plan to purchase the actual licensed version of Windows 7, this shouldn’t be a problem, but if you were planning to use the freebie release for a long time, think again.

For the most part, you should be able to use Vista drivers with Windows 7 RC. Windows 7 is built on Vista, so there should be a high degree of compatibility between the release candidate and the final version. Don’t expect manufacturers to release much in the way of drivers prior to the actual release, but rest assured, they’re working on any updates that need to be made to enable their products to work on Windows 7.

If you’re concerned about the Windows 7-readiness of your computer, check out the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, preferably before you download the release candidate. The Upgrade Advisor will let you know exactly what you need to do to your computer to get it ready for the Windows 7 product. Microsoft hasn’t yet announced a firm release date, but many analysts believe that the fourth quarter of 2009 is a good bet, and Windows 7 on store shelves in time for the Christmas holiday almost a sure thing.

Photo Credit: Raul P.

Searching for files on a computer is a very computationally intensive task. Not surprisingly, search is one function that will definitely put a hit on your performance. Search works on Vista by “indexing” the files on the computer. Indexing is Vista’s way of keeping track of what is stored and where it’s stored. Indexing can return a faster search result, but the process of tracking the location of a file can cause your computer to perform more slowly under most circumstances.

Searching Affects More Than The Search Command

Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. There’s more to the term “search results” than the computer’s ability to locate last year’s tax returns efficiently. To be sure, your tax “papers” are files as far as the computer is concerned, but so are the application you use to do your taxes and the drivers to run your computer hardware. “Search results” aren’t just applicable to files you happen to be looking for. Mostly, they’re files the computer is looking for!

Is there a happy medium? Maybe. If you want to tweak Indexing, you’re going to have to get comfortable with waiting a bit for file system search results. The other option is to settle for faster searches and slower performance, so if you’re willing to be patient when searching for files, you can have faster performance when you’re doing other things.
In earlier versions of Windows, Indexing was pretty much off the table. That is, you the user couldn’t adjust Windows’ indexing behavior. Vista has done away with that and now you can tweak Indexing to suit your personal tastes.

For maximum performance, you’ll want to disable Indexing for all areas except the Start Menu. If you turn Indexing off, you can expect better overall performance, but slower response when you (or the computer) are looking for files (including applications). Leave Indexing turned on for the Start Menu, and you’ll at least have the benefit of faster application response.

To modify Windows Vista’s indexing options, choose the Start button and select Indexing Options. Click Ok. Choose Modify > Show all locations. Uncheck all areas in the tree except the Start Menu. You can make your own personalized adjustments here if there are other areas you use frequently. You can also personalize the Indexing behavior by file type and other options, using the Advanced button.

If you don’t like the way Vista behaves after these changes, you can go back and tweak your indexing options further to suit your tastes.

In my last post, I provided a basic algorithm for setting up and configuring a new computer. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have new computers to start with. We don’t start looking for a problem on our existing computers until its operation seems unbearably slow.

Speeding Up An Existing Computer

So how do you speed up an existing computer? First, a simple cleaning may or may not solve your problem; don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work, or doesn’t produce the performance boost you were hoping for. This is usually because performance degradation is a combination of things, and is rarely one element of a configuration.

Having said that, if you’re trying to recover performance from an existing computer, start with the usual suspects. Take a look at what your computer loads when it starts. The fastest way to get an idea of what’s loading at startup is to look at the notification area in the lower right corner of the screen. If you’ve got a trail of icons there, examine each one carefully. Roll your mouse over each icon to see what the icon belongs to. Check the Hidden Icons, too by pressing the button that looks like “<" in the notification area on the task bar. Shut down anything that doesn't need to load and run constantly.

Not all programs put an icon in the notification area, so use the Software Explorer in Windows Defender or the System Configuration Tool to get a complete picture of what's taking up system resources at startup. Using the Software Explorer, you can look at the category "Startup Programs" for a list of what runs at startup. Reconfigure the computer to eliminate apps that are unneeded at startup.

Finally, take a look at the Task Manager to see what's running at any given instant. If you still spot programs that are running and shouldn't be, you can kill any process with the Task Manager.

Remove old, unneeded files from the computer, with one caveat. Sometimes programs need temporary files and use a special directory to write the files to. Removing temporary files is most often OK, but removing temporary directories may cause significant problems for some applications. After you're done housekeeping, defragment your hard drive. This is a good overnight task, especially if you don't often defragment your drive. This is a task you can schedule, too, so there's no need to get behind on defragging.

Close programs you're not using. It's tempting to open application after application after application. Each running app takes memory. If you're finished with an application, shut it down and make its memory available to other programs.

Periodically, restart your computer. That alone sometimes works wonders!

Photo Credit: Spike55151, via Flickr