Rumor has it, Windows 7 will be available for Technet and MSDN on August 6, 2009. Volume License customers will be able to get it on August 7. OEM’s – well, shortly. 
General availability – October 22. If I hadn’t renewed my Technet subscription already, I would before August 6!
Archives: 24 July 2009
July 24, 2009
Windows 7 on August 6! Horray for Technet!
July 24, 2009
The Abject Geekery Community
You will notice the new menu button above…
I’ve added a community forum to the site to provide for greater discussion opportunities than the current comment system allows. Not only will there be a chance for more give and take on the main posts, but there can be other more intriguing discussion by anyone who registers.
- Moderation does exist… but since I am outnumbered by libertarians, I fear that one will need a have a thick enough skin to survive potentially hated debate. Our goal is not to troll.
- Political debates and arguments belong in the Partisan Hackery Forum.
- The general forum will contain front page posts, as well as whatever you want outside of political posts.
- I will create other forums as needed.
July 24, 2009
Defragmentation. Your best tool for speed.
I’ve been in the computer industry for almost 25 years now. I’ve gone from the lowest on the totem pole to the service manager, and increased in pay faster than anyone ever in two of the companies I have worked for. I’ve seen some weird things in my time. At my first job in the computer industry, my coworkers started calling me the System Master because when no one could fix a system, they would call me in. And I never found a system I couldn’t fix, unless it was unfix-able. All that to let you know, when it comes to computers, I know a little about what I am talking about.
I remember working on a system some years ago. It was at a local law firm, here in Atlanta, back in the late 80′s. This system had two other technicians dispatched, and neither one could get this system working. I was finally called in. I don’t remember too many of the specifics of what I did initially, but I remember the end result and the fix. The system was so fragmented, it was actually working, but it took over an hour to boot. This, back when DOS was the norm. Talk about a totally screwed system.
After I defragged the system, everything worked fine.
Today, we have all kinds of different system tools out there to speed up the systems under the various flavors of Windows. Some work good, some are a scam, and some are just plain fraud or malicious. However, the best tool that anyone can use – to begin with – when the system is slowing down is Windows Defrag (Disk Defragmenter). This can be a life saver, and a cheap one at that. After all, it comes with Windows!
In all my years of tech support, one of the first questions I still have to ask all of my end users when they call me for a slow system is “When did you last defrag your system?” 95% of the time I get “Defrag? What is that?” Even if it is not the first time I’ve asked them. (If you are in Tech Support, you absolutely know what I mean here.)
Microsoft has finally gotten it right in Windows 7, in more than one way. But one of the first and most basic win’s they have here is they have Defrag automatically scheduled to run on a weekly basis as a default for the operating system. Whohoo! Finally! This one feature here will probably cut out about 20% of the tech support calls that companies get with computers. I know when I made it a company standard about 2 and a half years ago, to install Diskeeper on our systems, my calls went down to almost half. People quit complaining about the system slowing down.
Defragmentation of the hard drive is sort of like exercise for humans. Keep it fit, and it will keep running at optimum for you. Too bad Microsoft can’t come out with something to let us do exercise automatically, while we sleep.