Windows 7 / Office 365

Faced with the removal of support for Windows XP in 2014, it was finally time to bite the bullet of installing a new laptop using one of Microsoft's 64-bit based operating systems. 

Nothing I've read so far convinced me that an immediate move to Windows 8 would be anything but a major disruption, so I opted for a Windows 7 Pro system with a free copy of Windows 8 to be used later, if needed.

I chose a Toshiba with Intel Core i3/2348M processor, 4 GBytes of RAM, and 500 GBytes SATA disk.  At the level of a system for home or SME office use, this is a good compromise between power and price.  It's not going to be used to play games, but can certainly run all of the necessary office software, BBC iPlayer, browsers and so on. 

Installation was really very straightforward.  A few options - language, etc., account set-up, and we were good to go.  It detected the available wifi networks and all I had to do was select one, enter the password and let Windows know that this was a home network.  The next step was to create Windows Recovery DVDs - 4 in all.  The online manual - accessed with the pre-installed Acrobat Reader - gave the necessary instructions, and I ran the utility with the Verify option set.  This was a good idea - the third disc failed verification and had to be re-done. 

After that, all was very easy.  I downloaded the Chrome browser, as Microsoft's Internet Explorer starts up with all sorts of garish and unwanted stuff, and Bing as a search engine, and then starts leading you off in directions of selecting options.  Not interested.  I thought we were supposed to be offered a choice of browsers when starting a new PC - the EU spent years and untold millions of euros disputing with Microsoft to give us this - but I saw no sign of it. 

Printer set-up was very easy - much better than on the MacBook Pro.  Windows scanned the network and found the two printers (one is a multifunction device).  All of the necessary drivers were available, and the whole task was complete in a few minutes. 

One of the drawbacks of moving from Windows XP is that your much-loved Office 2003 software also becomes redundant.  Fortunately, starting up the one month free trial of Office 365 was easy too.  This gives you the full Home Premium product including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote and crucially - Outlook.   It all hooks up to SkyDrive and a licence allows the software to be used with up to 5 devices.   Not sure that I want all documents on SkyDrive - unlike the option that you can set up for a Google account, Microsoft accounts don't have two factor authentication yet.  But let's see how it goes, and whether it's really useful or not.

Another worry was the white background in Page Layout in Word.  Call me agoraphobic, but it looks as though there's something missing, or the page hasn't rendered fully.  A comforting grey would be much less disturbing and not keep making me think that it's not working properly. The same in PowerPoint - don't like it. Fortunately, there's an option to overcome this problem. Just select File / Account / Office Theme and Dark Gray is your friend.

But, like the move to rented rather than bought software licences, I guess this is something we'll have to just accept, like it or not. 

Summary: highly impressed with the ease of installation of Windows 7 Pro.  This looks a great successor to Windows XP and I feel very confident about using it when I replace my main work PC.  Office 365 - there's lots to explore. Familiarity comes with time and practice.

Antivirus update

I'm now uninstalling Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 from my main Windows XP system, and will give a try-out to Microsoft Security Essentials. If that doesn't work out, I'll be back to AVG. Kaspersky seemed to be unable to give reasonable performance in the set-up that I have for that system:

• Toshiba Tecra M10 with 3 GBytes memory and 150 GBytes of disk
• Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3 
• Microsoft Office Pro 2003 including Outlook 2003 
• Mozilla Firefox as the default browser, though Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari are also installed and were tried out to see if performance would be any better
• Microsoft Task Switcher power toy used to move from application to application

The system would hang up frequently, usually when Outlook was used.  Moving from message to message could cause processor utilisation to go to 100% and stay there for minutes on end.  One of the key components in Kaspersky, avp.exe, seemed to clock up a colossal number of page faults as shown in the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager, and the system fan seemed to be operating most of the time.  I tried reducing the e-mail scan heuristics intensity to 'Light' in the Kaspersky settings, but to no avail.

Of course, it's quite possible that cumulative security updates from Microsoft may have messed up Outlook's performance.  I felt that performance worsened after about April 2011, and this happened to coincide with updates for AVG Internet Security, which I was using at the time.  It will be instructive to see if Outlook performs as well as I'd expect with Microsoft Security Essentials.  

The experience of uninstalling Kaspersky and installing MSE has been pretty painless and fairly quick - about three quarters of an hour, including one reboot and the initial quick scan.  I decided to opt for Advanced membership for the Microsoft Active Protection Service in the MSE settings, but 'No' to Customer experience monitoring; the former should only be invoked if something happens, while the latter could impact performance at all times - presumably it starts a service at Windows load time.

By the way, MSE is free for small businesses with up to 10 PCs and for domestic use.  I'm still running Kaspersky on the Windows Vista PC without any obvious problem, although I don't run Outlook on that system.

Solution for the Global Tech scam?

Getting really fed up with the interruptions to my working day caused by calls from the Microsoft Windows Global Tech scammers. They phone up and try to convince you that your computer is infected (by getting you to look at the Event Log, which they reckon will scare you).

They ignore Telephone Preference Service registrations.  They claim to be operating from Baker Street in London but the phone calls sound as though they're coming from a very long way away.  A legitimate company working in the UK would not be making unsolicited sales calls to a TPS registered line.  The scammers don't take any notice of polite requests to desist from making these nuisance calls.

They offer to help by taking control of your computer, in return for a credit card charge.

Since we can't send a jolt of current back up the line to them, another solution is needed. It seems to me that the credit card companies are the critical link and by accepting payments for the scammers, they are facilitating the scam.  If people who've been caught out then report the scam to their credit card company, we may see some progress (and fewer annoying calls).

There's more useful information about other peoples' experiences on the Conflict International site (the blog is closed for comments).

You can register your phones with the Telephone Preference Service free of charge at http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ - don't be misled by others who offer you a paid service that purports to do the same thing.