In The Know - Charles Van Heusen's Weblog

Windows 7 Location Aware Printing

Are you tired of trying to remember to change your default printer every time you go from work to home with your laptop?  That’s where Windows 7 can come to the rescue with Location Aware Printing.  This is a new feature that is enabled in the Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions. 

Here’s the low down straight from the Windows Feature Guide:

Location-Aware Printing

Do you routinely print to multiple printers from your laptop? Now you don't have to manually switch printers when you go from, say, home to work. Windows 7 does it automatically.

The new feature, included in the Professional and Ultimate editions of Windows 7, works like this: Whenever you print, Windows 7 remembers which network and printer you're using. Next time you return to that spot, Windows automatically switches the default printer to match the one you last used. You can also manually pair printers and networks.

With Location-Aware Printing, all you need to do is click Print.

Windows 7 SKU Lineup – Understanding your options

In the graphic below, you’ll find a total of 6 different SKU’s listed for the new Windows 7 family.  If you are wondering what makes sense for you, let me help you understand your choices.  Let's start at the bottom and work our way up.  The Windows 7 Starter SKU is designed for an entry level solutions for systems like the ever popular Netbooks.  However, its low price comes with several limitations.  If you want a full functioning, feature rich version of Windows 7 for use at home, you need to start with Home Premium. 

For those of you coming from the Vista line up, you may remember a Home Basic Product.  This product has changed and is now only available in emerging markets outside the US.  This is basically a name change between Starter and Home Basic to help the US Consumer better understand the differences between the entry level option.  The name Home Basic lead to confusion for the non-techy consumers, so we made the names more distinct so it would reflect the differences in functionality.

Moving up the stack to WIndows 7 Professional, this is where you find the first “Business Class” offering of the product line up.  If your computer will need to “join a domain” ie. connect to a Windows Server, Small Business Server etc, this is where you should begin.  Home Premium will NOT connect to a server. 

At the top of the list you find the Ultimate and Enterprise editions.  These products include all the functionality of the previous versions, plus additionally functionality including “Bit Locker” and “Bit Locker To Go”.  Microsoft’s system encryption solution to protect the mobile worker now extends beyond the laptop to offer protection to USB thumb drives and external USB Hard drives.

To learn more about the differences between each version go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows7

Windows 7 is Here!!! Where do you begin??

If you’ve turned on the TV, opened a newspaper or magazine, you’ve likely heard about the new operating system, WIndows 7 that just released today.  I woke up this morning to find Steve Ballmer on TV delivering live demonstrations of Windows 7 for Matt Lauer on the Today Show.  As I made my way to the airport, there were radio ads playing and email ads started pouring in my Inbox from TigerDirect, CDW, and BestBuy touting the new systems and specials they are offering with the new operating system.

When I got to Boston this afternoon, I made my way to a local Best Buy to see if there was any excitement about Windows 7 inside.  I was surprised to find 20+ customers swarming around the vast array of laptops and desktop systems with less than an hour til the store closed.  The Best Buy staff were doing a great job fielding questions, but I couldn’t help myself from jumping in the conversations to see what kind of questions people were asking.  Most of them didn’t know what version they needed, how much RAM was enough or what the differences were from one model of laptop to another.  Everyone I spoke with really liked the new interface and couldn’t wait to make their first purchase of Windows 7.

For the people that were walking away with more questions than answers, I pointed them to our website on Windows 7 http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

in order to help them better understand the different options between the models as well as to see more online demonstrations so they could see what they felt they really needed.

If day 1 of the new OS is any sign of what’s to come, Windows 7 is going to have a great year!

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