Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

Questions, questions. This one was in an email.

“Everyone at work is using Windows 7 now. We did not do anything to change from XP. There are people who came in and did this over the weekend. We just came in and we had Windows 7. They had two trainings that day in the conference room. It really isn’t that hard to use. Some of us are still using XP at home, and when we mentioned that we were told that we had better get Windows 7 right away because we won’t be safe online anymore. But I don’t know if I can just buy Windows 7 and put it on my computer? Will I lose all my programs and files? I have a lot of pictures. I don’t have a backup program anymore. Thanks for your advice. Signed, Slow to Change”

I had a few questions to ask that reader before I knew how to answer her questions—which are similar to those being asked by many of XP’s faithful readers.

I told “Slow” she can buy Windows 7 Home Premium in stores and online; I would not recommend a lesser version. Based on how she uses her system at home, and the programs she wants to go on using, it doesn’t sound as if she needs more bells and whistles. Win7 Home Premium can be had for $80, give or take.

Win7 versions come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Both kinds are in the box; you need to decide which to install. Some computers aren’t 64-bit capable. Slow’s is. We made sure of this by having her right-click on My Computer and see whether the operating system has “x64” mentioned. Always install the 64-bit OS if your computer is capable of using it.

Slow was concerned about losing all her programs and files, especially her photos. I don’t blame her! She admits she hadn’t been backing up, but says she could use her “CD drive,” which turns out to be a DVD drive which can read and write DVDs and is backward compatible to CDs. It’s an internal optical drive.

But sooner or later I think Slow is going to want an external hard drive, maybe for backup purposes, and to hold more “data” or files: letters and other documents made with Word, music files, some saved videos, and her many photos.

She will want to store more than a DVD holds, and much more than a CD’s capacity. So an external hard drive, attached to a USB port, is just the thing. At least 500 Gigabytes—but why not a terabyte? Or several? Those can be had for less than $100 any day of the week.

Getting a nice, big external drive will let Slow use a free, downloadable program called Easy Transfer. It will help her transfer the files she wants to keep to her new external drive. This would also be a step in the process of shifting to a new computer and making sure favorite files are not lost in the process. (In that situation, most of us are going to want to zero out our old hard drive before discarding the computer—and just “deleting” isn’t good enough: “scrubbing” is the better process, overwriting the old drive completely.)

But how about the programs? Easy Transfer will list the programs currently available on the system. Slow will need to think about how old they are. Many that have worked from the get-go under XP are pretty long in the tooth, and aren’t going to work with Win7. But some will. Even those that Win7 tolerates are going to be “lost” in the OS upgrade process, and will have to be reinstalled from the media that came in the shrink-wrapped boxs when you bought those programs.

Some of the old faithful programs people have been using and are comfortable with in dated versions can still be used with Win7 when it is used in XP emulator mode. I urged Slow to upgrade several applications because the newer editions will provide features she has come to like, at work. The WordPerfect she has been putting up with forever, at home, can be retired at last. I believe she will like the Office clone I recommended. If perchance she doesn’t, she can get whichever up-to-date Office suite she thinks she needs.

One specialized set of programs we use constantly, often not thinking of them or their versions at all, is drivers. Those programs came with the devices we use, the mouse and keyboard, printers and scanners and cameras and so on. Drivers are programs that allow those devices to communicate with the computer, and perform the functions we want them to perform. Older drivers, like other older programs, might not work with Win7. So Slow needs to go to the website of each device’s manufacturer and check out its compatibility status.

Modern operating systems come with lots of drivers built in, for the most popular models of many devices, from drives to input devices to printers and faxes and tablets, etc. For those that will need the user to download a new driver to have on hand, Slow can do that, for free. And where will she save it when she downloads it? Right. On that nice new external hard drive.

When Slow starts her installation of Windows 7, she’ll be asked to select the kind of installation she wants. She will need to choose “Custom.” This will take a while, because it will remove stuff that won’t be used in the future, and will plant on the C Drive the stuff that will.

Recently I was in a group of people some of whom were discussing their annoyance at having to abandon XP, and I heard a typical complaint: “I think they just do this to make us buy something new. We don’t even have a choice because there won’t be any more protection from viruses. Otherwise, if it ain’t broke we wouldn’t have to fix it!”

I don’t agree. Not but what it annoys me when any software companies come out with new versions every year or oftener, rather than timely patches and updates. XP was a huge improvement on earlier Windows, but was adopted slowly and reluctantly! Windows 7 and 8 are solid, and provide productivity and security enhancements well worth having.

Do we always wait for our current vehicles to “break” before buying a current or recent model? Do the appliances and furniture have to wear out before we replace them?

Most of what I have mentioned about upgrading to Windows 7 would apply to Windows 8. I am not using 8 at this point, but probably will before much longer.