If you are a student looking for an economical way to upgrade to Windows 7, through this special offer you can purchase an upgrade for $30.

The requirements for this offer are as follows:

• You qualify if you have a valid .EDU e-mail OR an e-mail address through one of the educational institutions listed here.
• You are enrolled in coursework, current proof or enrollment may be required in the United States.

This offer is good through January 3, 2010. Needless to say, this is a fantastic deal so take advantage of it if you can.

Now that Windows 7 is released, you early adopters may be interested in exactly how to migrate your existing install to Windows 7. If this is the case, check out this Microsoft article: Step-by-Step: Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration.

The article walks you through all the scenarios:

• Windows XP to Windows 7
• Windows Vista to Windows 7
• Old XP/Vista computer to a new computer running Windows 7

Personally, whenever I am installing an OS, I just wipe my existing installation and install it new. In my experience, an upgrade typically leaves stuff behind and I prefer my OS installation not be inhibited by any “pre-existing conditions” so there are no problems down the road.

Full disclosure, I would probably be considered by many to be a border line tree hugger. Among other things, I hate throwing items away which can be reused or recycled by either myself or someone else, especially hazardous things such as computers. That said, I always try to “max out” what I have before considering getting something new.

Recently I upgraded an aging Dell machine at work (with some help from the forum) to better a processor. The processor upgrade essentially maxed out the machine as the memory is at capacity and the processor is one step below the max.

The user has definitely noticed the difference and this has prolonged our need for a new machine for probably another 6-12 months. The grand total for this upgrade was $22. Following my other belief that you buy only what you need, we have definitely saved money on this machine by upgrading the memory and processor as we go… not to mention the money saved by extending the life of the machine.

I made mention last week that if you were running XP illegally, you could still get Windows 7 by buying Vista, then buying the Windows 7 Upgrade and the total cost would be around $138.

NewEgg now offers free Windows 7 coupons with certain Vista license purchases.

The cost now? $109.99. With free shipping. This is something that wasn’t available last week, but now it is.

This is $90 less than buying Windows 7 Home Premium which starts at $200.

You wanted a better price? You got it.

(Note: If you are running Windows XP or Vista legally, this article does not apply to you.)

I’m not going to pretend for a moment that there’s more than a few of you out there running Windows XP illegally. You’ve seen the very nice $50 price tag of Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade and said, "Okay, I can afford that, but can I upgrade a pirated copy of XP to Win 7?"

Answer: No. When you hit the WGA, the upgrade won’t work.

However.. I can tell you how to get Windows 7 for significantly less than the full-version $200 price tag.

Here’s how it’s done:

1. Buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Basic "System Builders" Edition from NewEgg. Cost is $84.99 with free shipping. This is a qualifying product for the Windows 7 Upgrade.
2. Pre-order your Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49.99. Remember, this price only lasts until July 11, 2009. After that it’s $119 for the upgrade and $200 for the full version.

Your total cost will be $134.98. Shipping will be free on both products. This is significantly cheaper than the full $200 price tag for the full-version Win 7 price. Granted, you’ll never use the license of Windows Vista you purchased, but it does take $65 off what you would have spent for the full-version Win 7 otherwise. This is an easy, and moreover legal, way to save cash on the purchase of the OS.

Why go legal with Windows?

There’s really only one reason. It’s for Windows Update.

Windows Update started with Windows 98 which was over 10 years ago, however the Windows Genuine Advantage validation check didn’t occur until 2006.

If you are running Windows illegally, you basically can’t use WU at all and that’s a problem. Whenever critical updates are sent thru the WU system, you won’t be able to install it. Not easily, anyway.

The common comeback to that is, "Well, I don’t have to use WU. I could install the patches manually." Yes, you could. But you know full well that’s decidedly inconvenient and a pain to get done.

If you don’t feel like paying for Windows, just use Linux. But if you do use Windows, the one-time license cost is worth the price for the updates.

Most people take WU for granted, but it is vital to make sure critical updates are applied without any hassle.

Put simply, I don’t upgrade operating systems. Ever.

I install any OS new and recommend the same to anyone else. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows, OS X or Linux. Don’t upgrade. Back up your stuff, wipe the drive and start from scratch with the new OS.

To note, I don’t do this with incremental updates (e.g. XP Service Pack 2 to 3) but rather with significant version changes (e.g. Ubuntu 7 to 8).

In my personal experience, my OS upgrades have consisted mainly with Linux and Windows boxes; neither of them know how to do major version updates correctly and never have.

With Linux, I will encounter some type of upgrade issue without fail. If it’s not X that screws up, it’s the network connection. Or maybe Samba decides to drop all the network shares. Or maybe some other service just magically decided to stop working and absolutely will not work again no matter how many configuration files you manually edit or services you stop/restart or reboots you perform. Or maybe the OS won’t load properly at all. But when you install fresh, ta-da… everything works like it’s supposed to and you can go on your merry way.

With Windows, any OS upgrade will leave an enormous amount of crap left behind by the previous version – always. The drivers that used to work in the old OS will try to load in the new one and BZZT… sorry Charlie, that doesn’t work anymore. In addition, the computer runs slow because it’s got all the preexisting crapola it’s still trying (and failing) to use. But when you install fresh, there’s no crap Windows has to deal with and therefore runs better.

I have never recommended that anyone take an existing OS and install an upgrade on top of it, and I never will.

Most of you out there will be upgrading to Windows 7 from XP when it comes to market. What I suggest you do now is the following:

Take inventory of your software

For every app you use, open up a spreadsheet app like Excel or Calc or Google Docs and list them all there. Include your downloaded stuff, your games and everything else. Consider it to be your own personal how-to guide to “build” your OS the way you like it.

For the downloaded apps in particular, make a separate column with the download link so you don’t have to go hunting for it later.

Keep this spreadsheet up-to-date.

For those that would ask why this is even necessary, the answer is that it’s easier to read a spreadsheet than it is to fumble thru a huge list of files and folders. Also, there’s probably at least a few apps you have to install in a specific order. Having the inventory on spreadsheet makes that easy to follow.

(For Linux users I also recommend doing the software inventory spreadsheet. Note the apps you have installed from your respective repositories. Just because you use Linux doesn’t mean you don’t take inventory of what’s on your box.)

Burn any/all downloaded app(s) to CD or DVD or copy to USB stick

CDs and DVDs are cheap and readily available. Buy a 50-pack of a decent brand (one can never have too many) and a set of fine point Sharpie markers. Set aside some time to burn all your stuff.

Recommendation: I suggest burning each disc twice just in case the first one fails or an optical drive decides “I don’t want to play nice with this disc” and scratches it all up.

Alternative: Use a large-capacity USB stick. 16GB versions start at 25 bucks. And it’s most likely true that all your downloaded app-installer files don’t get anywhere near that capacity when combined.

Need more space? Get a 32GB stick. Still need more? Get a 64GB.

Before you wince at the price of the 64’s, bear in mind this is a little USB stick we’re talking about.

If you can fit all your app installer files on a single USB stick, trust me when I say that’s darned convenient. Having all your must-have apps on a single stick is so much easier to deal with compared to flipping thru disc after disc.

Why don’t I recommend external hard drives?

Because you’re most likely using it as a primary backup for other things besides downloaded apps, and you’re probably using it routinely. When doing an app-inventory backup, it’s best use a store-and-forget method until you need it. Discs and USB sticks allow you to do that.

Collect any/all from-OEM discs, put them all together and categorize

These are CDs supplied with your printer, digital camera, camcorder, digital dictation device, GPS, etc. Buy a disc folder or box and stuff ‘em all in there. The software is probably more important to you than the manuals so you might as well keep it all together.

I’m not saying to throw out the boxes or manuals – but put the discs together.

If you don’t feel like doing that, burn copies of the driver/software discs and do it that way.

If you do this stuff now, it will make your new-OS install a whole lot simpler in the future

Most people do the above the day they buy a new OS. Wrong. Don’t do that. Doing it all in a day means you’re guaranteed to miss something along the way. That OEM driver disc you thought you had will end up missing. That file you thought you had won’t be there or backed up anywhere.

And let’s say that you don’t plan on jumping to Windows 7 the week it’s released. That’s fine – but you should still do inventory and back up your apps regardless. There is never such a thing as being too prepared when it comes to computers and operating systems.

Note: My upgrade didn’t work but my new 8.10 Ubuntu is freshly installed. Here are the immediate things I noticed from my initial use of the OS:

Above: When I customize my appearance settings to “Subpixel smoothing (LCDs)”, “Slight” is now automatically selected and this is cool. Saves me a few clicks.

Above: You can now create a bootable USB stick of Ubuntu natively within the OS. (System, Administration, Create a USB startup disk). All OSes should have this feature, period.

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The Ubuntu 8.10 default wallpaper is the I’ve seen since “Dawn of Ubuntu”.

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The Partition Manager (GParted) is now much more graphical in the best possible way. The previous one was functional but a bit difficult to understand what it was doing. This one, however, shows everything in a clear concise manner. Very much appreciated.

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Above: Deskbar now operates much better. For those that use Launchy in Windows (which I do all the time) or Spotlight in OS X, Deskbar is now up to par with the others. Works very nicely and is buttoned up compared to what was in the 8.04 Ubuntu release.

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Above: At the top right (in the default desktop), the icon is redesigned in a way that totally makes sense. Gone is the green “running man”. A red universal power button now shows that on click is a simplified drop-down menu. You absolutely cannot mistake this for anything else (whereas with the “running man” you could). This is a good design choice.

~ ~ ~

Several pop-up dialogs in the panel tray have been re-worded. For example, a wireless network is now labeled as a “hidden network”. For wireless routers that don’t broadcast their names, this makes sense to call it hidden.

~ ~ ~

Above: Panels can now be “permanently” locked. Right click any panel and look for the “Allow panel to be moved” option. This is good to have so panels aren’t accidentally moved.

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I am still learning the ins and outs of the Ubuntu 8.10 OS but so far I can say yes, it’s easier to use compared to 8.04. There are lots of nice little touches here and there that make this a more enjoyable computing experience.

Note that I didn’t say enjoyable Linux experience – just computing.

Version 8.10 is good step forward in having a Linux based OS where you simply don’t have to care what the engine running it is.

Put another way: You could put someone in front of Ubuntu and that someone could use this OS without having to know nor care that it’s Linux.

As far as a desktop computing OS goes, that’s the ultimate goal. You should not have to ever think about the engine. You should be able to just turn it on and just do what you do with a computer, because said honestly you can cackle on all you want about Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux, but at the end of the day people will use whatever it takes to get the job done.

Ubuntu 8.10 definitely gets the job done.

If you tried 8.04 and were a bit turned off by the rough edges, many of those edges have been smoothed out with 8.10.

At the present time I’m trying to upgrade my Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 but the servers holding the files are getting slammed right now (first day of release – it’s expected).

You can upgrade your Ubuntu 100% from the internet just by clicking a few options and letting the update manager do its thing. See video below for details – it’s super-easy (but takes forever at present because everybody is trying to download it right now). Continued

There are times when you just have to ask the question "WHY?!", and this is one of those times.

Google has performed a Gmail upgrade for those still using Microsoft Internet Exploder Explorer 6. Yes, you read that correctly. Version 6. Not 7.

Evidently there’s still a fair amount of internet users getting by with version 6 of the IE browser. If you happen to be one of those people, you must be an adventure seeker. One who likes to live on the wild side. One who looks at all the dangers of using that browser, spits in the direction of the internet and says.. "Bring it on.."

To give you an idea of how old IE6 is, it was released on August 27, 2001. IE7 is also old (released October 18, 2006). Regardless of that, if you’re still using IE6 by choice.. you seriously need to upgrade.

I would imagine most of the IE6 users are in corporate environments run by idiots who positively refuse to upgrade the browsers on the end user machines to version 7. Why? Nobody knows. I blame corporate stupidity.

In the past, whenever you purchase an upgrade release of a Microsoft OS, you have to provide proof that you own a previous version for the upgrade to continue. Typically, you prove this by either installing on top of an eligible OS or by inserting the older installation media during the installation process. Well, the same is true for Vista upgrades versions, with the exception that the Windows Vista upgrade counts an unactivated copy of Vista itself as an ‘older’ copy.

Using this trick, you can get a fully functional legal copy of the Vista version of your choice for a significantly cheaper price since you just need the upgrade version. This workaround is apparently here to stay because Microsoft knows about it and still included the trick with SP1.

While I haven’t tried this personally, it sounds like you can really save yourself some cash and go with just an upgrade copy of Windows Vista instead of the full retail version.

Last week I upgraded one of our laptops from 1 GB to 2 GB of memory for the whopping cost of $25. The memory was nothing special, just a single 1 GB DDR2 laptop stick. Considering the price of the most common type of memory is so cheap right now, why not double your RAM? The cost of putting extra memory in your system is always well spent as it typically increases performance more than any other upgrade and can extend the life of your PC for a while.

If you are not sure what type of memory you need, use a memory selector such as what Crucial or NewEgg offer (both of these places are also excellent places to buy your memory).

Unfortunately, if you are using older types of RAM such as PC133 or DDR (1), the prices are not as cheap. If this is the case, check out Ebay where you can usually pick up new or good as new stuff for quite a bit cheaper than buying it new.

If you are a Ubuntu user, you are probably well aware of the recent 8.04 upgrade release. As you know, you can either do a clean installation (format and install fresh) or an upgrade installation (install on top of your existing OS). If you are pondering which is best for you, then I recommend this recent article on Linux.com: “Ubuntu 8.04: Upgrade or clean install?“.

The author explains their experience in upgrading both ways as well as the benefits and drawbacks to each. Having done two Ubuntu upgrades myself (5.10 to 6.06 and 6.06 to 7.04), I found a clean install each time was what worked best for me. Of course, the decision is yours to make and you probably cannot go wrong with either choice.

Of course, the #1 thing to do before any upgrade is to make sure your data is backed up!

In order to write blogs you need a blog engine (the CMS software). Over the years I’ve used several and this includes but is not limited to MovableType, b2evolution, Drupal, Serendipity and several others.

The “big two” I’ve used most are MovableType (abbreviated MT) and WordPress (abbreviated WP). For several years I was a die-hard MT user and absolutely refused to use anything else because I knew the system so well. But then Dave decided to switch over PCMech entirely to WP from an in-house programmed CMS he wrote himself and hasn’t looked back. It impressed me so much that I switched to WP on my own personal blog.

Very recently WP released version 2.5. I upgraded to that version and can say in all honesty that it kicks ass.

Here’s why:

Faster menus

The design of the admin interface is leaner and meaner.

Grouped menus that make sense

The previous WP was very separated in the way the menus were laid out. In 2.5 there’s more grouping and it’s done in a way that works. For example, all templates/widgets are placed under the menu “Design”. This makes sense because it directly affects the design of the blog.

Dynamic automatic updating of plugins via FTP

This is in my estimation a SERIOUSLY cool improvement because you can update plugins in WP now as easily as you would in Firefox. WP will check your installed plugins to make sure they’re up-to-date, and if not will prompt you (like previous versions) to upgrade but it doesn’t stop there. You can then insert your FTP server information, WP will download the plugin, extract it, install it and clean up the old version information afterwards.

How cool is that?

Frickin’ awesome if you asked me.

Overall design is much better, cleaner

In addition to the grouped menus the overall design of the interface (which is what WP admins look at most) is improved. You can tell this is designed for writers first; something the WP team has always taken into consideration.

I won’t say 2.5 is perfect (no CMS is), but this is definitely a no-brainer upgrade.