I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows 7. I had been wanting to get a new 7200 rpm hard drive and decided to wait until Windows 7 was available. I’ve been running Windows 7 for a few weeks now and I thought I’d share what I like.

Background

Let me give some background first. I was one of those that skipped Windows Vista. Windows XP was working just fine for me and I never took the trouble to upgrade. With all the bad press it didn’t seem entirely necessary. So why Windows 7? Partly because Windows XP has been around a long time. To get my laptop to work the way I wanted would have required a reinstall of XP to clean up all the bloat that has accumulated over the last 2.5 years. Since I was getting a new hard drive and Windows 7 was getting good reviews I thought this would be a good time to try it out.

The Taskbar

First, the Taskbar. That’s the thing at the bottom of the screen that gives you access to your currently running programs. With Windows 7 they have given you the ability to “pin” your most frequently used programs permanently onto the Taskbar. What’s interesting is I have been working this way in Windows XP forever. I created my own “toolbar” in XP and placed links to my most frequently used programs in it. The toolbar sat on the left side of my screen always available for me to start a program when I needed it without having to go to the Start menu and find it.

With Windows 7 they have taken the concept a bit further. To differentiate a program that is running from one that isn’t they box in the icon. The currently active window is highlighted as well. If an open program has more than one window, or more than one instance of the program running, the Taskbar indicates this by showing a second page behind the icon in the Taskbar.

When you hover your mouse over an icon of a running program, Windows pops up a little preview window of the program. If there are multiple windows it shows them all. You can click on any one to go directly to it. This makes finding the window you want fairly easy. I hardly ever Alt+Tab to switch windows any more. You can even close a window using the ‘x’ in the little preview.

Favorites in Explorer

I can’t tell you how happy I am that they included Favorites in an Explorer window. This saves so much time it’s not even funny. I am constantly bringing up Explorer windows and going to the same directories over and over. Now I can do it with one click after bringing up a window.

Now if I could find a way to move the “Computer” selection to the top of the list I would be in heaven. Why? Because I have a long list of Favorites, when I open an Explorer window it defaults to the “Computer” selection. If my Explorer window is small it means I have to scroll up to find all my Favorites. If the “Computer” selection was at the top, my Favorites would be right below them and mostly visible all the time.

Searching and Indexing

With Windows XP I used Google Desktop to index and search my hard drive contents. I can say that I am pretty happy with the way Windows 7 handles searching and indexing, but I did have to customize how it works by default to get it to work the way I expected.

Most of my files are not in the standard “My Documents”, “My Videos”, “My Whatever” directories. To get them indexed is easy enough. Open an Explorer window (Start menu then click on Computer), right click on the directory you want indexed and select “Include in library” and then select the Library you want. Easy enough. After the files are indexed I can search them.

To search for something all you have to do is click on the Start button and start typing. If you have a Windows key on your keyboard you can just press it and start typing. Results will be displayed directly above the text as you type.

The problem I encountered is that by default indexing only looks at file properties for some file types. This would be things like file name and other limited information. What I want is for indexing to look at the entire contents of my files so I can search for any part of the file.

Here’s how to make sure file contents are searched.

• Open Control Panel and make sure you have the “View by” set to” Large Icons”
• Find “Indexing Options” and click on it
• Click on the “Advanced” button then on the “File Types” tab
• Find each file extension and make sure the “Index Properties and File Contents” is selected

Yes, this must be done for each file type. Thankfully most of the common ones are already properly selected. It’s the oddball file types that have to be changed. For me it was PHP.

One confusing point. Bring up an Explorer window and select “Tools” then “Folder Options” and then click on the “Search” tab. The default selection for “What to search” is “In indexed locations, search file names and contents. In non-indexed locations, search file names only.” To me this sounds like I shouldn’t have to go through the previous steps. It appears that the settings in “File Types” overrides the folder options.

Pen Input

I use a Wacom tablet when editing in PhotoShop. Windows 7 recognized this as a tablet interface and provides pen-input capabilities including handwriting recognition. I played around with the handwriting recognition and found it to be very accurate. Even with a mix of cursive writing it was able convert my terrible handwriting into the proper text. I wrote the last two sentences using handwriting recognition.

While this isn’t something I would choose to use on my desktop, there are a number of convertible PC’s available that allow pen based input. For someone who needs to wander around with a computer and still be able to input information it would be a viable option.

The Other Things

Are there things I don’t like about Windows 7? Sure. The Alt+Tab behavior now shows thumbnail previews of the applications. The problem is a thumbnail of a web page and a thumbnail of Outlook appear pretty similar at a small size. Throw in a couple of Word documents and everything looks the same. If the program icons were a bit bigger along with the thumbnails it might be more useful.

Most people might not run into this, but I have a couple of programs that were created without the proper Publisher information in them. When I run them they always bring up a dialog asking if I want to allow the program to run. I’ve even set the program to run as an Administrator and it still gives me the dialog. To get rid of it would mean turning my security down to a level I’m not comfortable with, so I put up with it, hoping a future version will get the proper Publisher info.

The only other issue is what you have to upgrade to work with Windows 7. For me it was Adobe Acrobat Professional. I needed to upgrade anyway so it wasn’t a big deal. I also found that I misplaced the CD for my camera. So I have to order another from the manufacturer. Still hoping I find it tucked away somewhere.

Conclusion

Am I happy I moved to Windows 7? Yes. Have I moved all my other computers to Windows 7? No. Not yet. It is a daunting task to reinstall everything which I have to do when upgrading from Windows XP. When I do I will most likely buy a new hard drive for Windows 7. I’ll keep the Windows XP hard drive to copy my data files and act as a backup until I’m sure I’ve got each machine where it needs to be.

Is Windows 7 everything it’s claimed to be? Only time will tell. From some of the reviews I’ve read it’s not necessarily faster on the same machine, but it does give a little better battery life for laptops when they are unplugged. I do like the new features and so far it’s been very stable.

Miscellaneous windows 7

I was a substitute at a BNI meeting the other day. One of the members, Tony Meier, was going on vacation and asked if I could represent him at the meeting. I was looking forward to the meeting since I had been a member of the group for two years and had not been able to attend for quite a while.

I got to the meeting early and saw quite a few familiar faces. It was fun catching up with the members who were in the group when I left. I also met some of the new members.

The commercials

As part of the meeting each attendee stands up and gives a 30 second commercial about their business. I was prepared to give a commercial for Tony and one for myself. I had done it many times before during the two years I was an active member.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how nervous I became as my turn got closer. The butterflies in the stomach started churning and I could feel my pulse in my stomach.

Butterflies are a bad thing

After this relatively short period of absence from the group my comfort level had changed dramatically. Standing up and speaking in front of a crowd has never been my strong point. When I first joined the group and had to stand up and do my commercial I was very nervous. Those nerves lasted a while until I got to know the group and had some practice with my commercial. By the time I left the group I was much more comfortable giving my commercial even to groups I was attending for the first time.

I’ve continued attending other networking functions since leaving the group, but few of them require giving a commercial of any length. When I returned to the BNI group I didn’t think I would be so nervous during the commercials.

Keep up on it

In reality most things require regular practice to not lose a comfort level or “edge” whether it’s a sport, cooking, photography, or public speaking. The more you do something, the easier it becomes. You learn to work through the issues and the tough challenges and they become part of your experience. Stop doing something for a while and those experiences fade and you have to relearn them. They may not take as long to learn the second time around, but you are bound to make a few of the same mistakes along the way.

While I still feel comfortable at the other networking events I attend, I obviously need to get out a little more and exercise the public speaking role. It’s not the funnest thing I can think of, but becoming more comfortable speaking to people can have big benefits when trying to run a small business.

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And it only takes a few steps to actually get there. That’s right, all those other architectural photographers in Seattle wish they had organic Google rankings like I have. Here’s how to actually see it.

1. Go to the Google Home Page.
2. Type this in the search field exactly “seattle architectural photographers“. Yes it needs the “s” on the end of photographer.
3. Click the “Google Search” button. As of the writing of this article I’m the 4th listing after local businesses.
4. Now click the “Show options…” link in the upper left, just above the business listings.
5. Then click on the “Images from the page” link that shows up on the left.

Whew. That wasn’t too hard. Here’s what I see when I do those steps. I took the liberty of removing all the distracting elements from the page, which really were not important.

If you change your search term to “seattle architectural photographer” I come in second.

Now to get all my competitions clients to drop them and hire me because I rank so well on Google. I should probably also try to figure out WHY I’m getting such good rankings. I used to be way down in the list even without doing the extra things.

Thanks to my pal Will Austin for pointing this out.

Miscellaneous, News google, rank, search

Apparently I do. I didn’t remember creating it, but when I posted to Faith Sheridan’s Blog an image of myself came up that surprised me. I was not expecting my image to show up just by posting a comment since this was the first time I had commented and certainly had not uploaded an image for use on her site.

I right-clicked on the link to see where the image was coming from and the root URL was http://www.gravatar.com.

After going to the site they define gravatar as: a “globally recognized avatar”. What that means is they provide one location to store your avatar or personal representation of yourself for use on other web sites. The web site has to be enabled to use the gravatar. There is more information on gravatar on wikipedia.

It is a great concept to have one location to store your personal image. If more sites took advantage of the service it would cut down on the number of places you have to upload a new profile picture.

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Here is a list of the things I really like right now that make running my business easier and more productive, especially as a sole-proprietor who wears all the hats.

FileZilla: FileZilla is an open source FTP program. The nice part, it’s free and it works. It will keep track of multiple FTP sites, and does a great job of transferring lots of files. I use it to upload slide shows to my web site for clients to access.

LogMeIn: LogMeIn allows me to easily access my home or work computer from any location. It takes a few screens to actually gain access to the remote computer, but once connected screen redraws are fast and can be customized to provide more detail if necessary. I tried doing remote access through other means but with dynamic IP addresses and modem/router configurations I was never able to make it work reliably. With LogMeIn I have not had a problem. I use the free service which allows me access to all my files as if I was sitting at the machine. You can upgrade to a paid Pro service to move files directly between your local and remote computers. I use the service listed next when I have to copy files between local and remote machines.

DigitalBucket.net: I found DigitalBucket.net when I was searching for a file delivery system that my clients and I could easily use. DigitalBucket offers a lot more functionality that I currently take advantage of, and they offer ample storage options for reasonable prices. I like them because they have a very intuitive interface for uploading and sharing files. My clients don’t have to log in unless they want to access the advanced features. I just send them a link to their files and they are ready to go.

Hosted Microsoft Exchange: My websites are hosted by MyHosting.com. They started offering a hosted exchange service that would provide my Blackberry with two-way push email, contacts, tasks and notes. I had been struggling trying to keep my Blackberry synced up to my computer and often had calendar items out of date. Now everything I enter on the Blackberry is automatically synced to the hosted Exchange server and everything I enter in Outlook on my computer is synced to my Blackberry. I wish I had done this two years ago.

Miscellaneous