A lot of people are talking about Windows 7 upgrade. I’ve noticed most of them are complaining about how to installation it. Some are getting error messages, some say installations are on a loop and some are stuck on a certain point of installation.

So before you purchase Windows 7, you need to check on a few things: system requirements, upgrade path (for upgrade installation) and type of installation.

System Requirements

Recommended

Minimum

Maximum

If your system specifications are greater than these values, Windows 7 will only use up to the maximum value. So for the x86 architecture, even if the computer has 8GB of RAM, Windows 7 will only show 4GB of RAM available.

Upgrade Path

The upgrade path for Windows 7 starts at Windows Vista SP1 or later. The earlier versions of Windows are not supported for upgrade to Windows 7.

RIU = Repair in-place Upgrade               WAU = Windows Anytime Upgrade

So even if your computer has the recommended requirements but have the wrong disc, you still can’t perform the upgrade installation. Although there is a work around for this situation. For example, the machine has Windows Vista Business 32-bit and the upgrade disc is Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit. Since there is no upgrade path for this, a key less custom or clean installation can be done, then after will be a RIU.

Installation Method

There are 5 different types of installation; clean, custom, repair in-place, parallel and upgrade. Clean install is where a hard drive is reformatted before installation. Custom install on the other hand is similar to clean install, only the HD is not reformatted at the same time Windows 7 will create a folder named Windows.old. This folder contains the previous operating system’s Windows folder, Program files folder and Documents and Settings folder (for Windows XP). Repair in-place, also called “dirty install”, is just repairing the current operating system with the same Windows edition. Parallel install is where one OS is installed on the 1st partition and another OS is installed on the 2nd partition. An example is, Windows XP is installed in C: drive while installing Windows 7 in D: drive. This is good for testing different IE browsers in one computer. The last type of installation is upgrade. Upgrade install is performed while the previous OS is booted. For instance. Windows Vista Home Premium is running while Windows 7 Home Premium installer is launched. Most users choose upgrade installation because it automatically transfer files, settings and programs from the old OS to the new one. Compared to clean installation, upgrade install has a greater chance of getting problems on the installation because not all programs on the previous operating system are compatible to Windows 7.

It is important to consider the type of installation to perform because this determines what type of Windows 7 installer to purchase. For example, a downloaded installer from Digital River cannot be used for clean installation because the the setup can only launch while the OS is running. So if ever a downloaded installer is to be used for a clean installation, a bootable DVD must be created first using the files that were downloaded. For some computers like netbooks, the only option they have is either a downloaded upgrade installer or boot from a USB flash drive.

To wrap things up, it is recommended to use Windows Upgrade Advisor to check if there are incompatible programs running on the OS before upgrading to Windows 7. But still, clean installation has lesser chances of getting errors compared to upgrade install.

One of the things me and my husband, along with our little Vaughn, usually do is watch movies. Lately, we were able to watch the science fiction film, KNOWING, starred by Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, and Rose Byrne. The beginning of the movie was kinda scary in a really creepy way but eventually the majority of the scenes were entertaining and mind bogging. This is one of those movies were you’d really have to listen into their conversations just to understand its plot but I’ve always loved movies by Nicolas Cage and this is just another one of those I’d like to put into my collection.

Here is a really detailed synopsis of the movie KNOWING from imdb.com.

The film opens in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1959, where a competition is held among the students of a new elementary school to celebrate its opening. The winning plan, from student Lucinda Embry, a seemingly mental disorder/mentally disturbed girl, is to bury a time capsule containing the students’ drawings of the future to be opened 50 years later in 2009.

She is prevented from finishing her image, which is actually a series of seemingly random numbers, and goes missing during the ceremony. Her teacher later finds her in a gym closet, frantically scratching the remaining numbers into the door. Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened and the pictures are handed down to the new generation of students. Caleb, the son of MIT professor and astrophysics|astrophysicist John Koestler, receives Lucinda’s envelope. Initially dismissing them as random numbers, John notices a single random number sequence, 911012996, which contains the date of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks|World Trade Center attacks as well as the death toll of the attack. Further research leads John to realise the numbers are a list contain the dates and death tolls of every major disaster, natural and man made, that has happened over the past 50 years, with three that have not occurred yet.

Nicolas Cage and Rose Byrne

When a commercial plane crash kills 81, the legitimacy of the list of numbers is confirmed and leading John to believe that Lucinda had an ability to prognosticate since childhood until she died. It is also revealed through this incident that the numbers contain the coordinates for every event listed. As his wife died in one of the past events, John starts to believe his son was chosen to get Lucinda’s prophecies. After Caleb receives a vision of future global catastrophe from a silent man, John tries to contact the late Lucinda’s daughter, Diana, to gain more information, but is rebuffed. But when John also predicts the second event, a subway train crash, Diana and her daughter, Abby, visit John and Caleb, and Diana reveals that her mother foretold of the date of her death would be on October 19th, which is also within the list. They investigate Lucinda’s old mobile home in the woods, discovering walls of news clippings of the events and a drawing of Merkabah|Ezekiel’s Wheel. During their investigation, the group encounters the silent man and three others, who vanish in a flash of light protruded from the man’s mouth when John confronts them. Later Caleb is found writing numbers very similar to the ones that Lucinda wrote without realizing what he is doing. This may suggest that those numbers are predictions for future events. As a result of the confrontation, Abby is revealed to have been contacted by the “whisper people”. Initially believing that the last event will kill only 33, John eventually re-examines the numbers after Diana’s mention on how her mother used to write numbers and letters backward. He discovers that the final digits are not “33″, but actually “EE” written backwards; the final event is a massive solar flare that will kill “Everyone Else.” As Diana prepares to travel to a system of caves she believes will save them, John breaks into the school to steal the door Lucinda scratched the numbers on. At his house, he begins to scrape the paint off the door, but Diana refuses to wait for him, and leaves with the kids. As the solar flare approaches, it begins to disrupt cell phone signals, preventing John from contacting Diana.

The Strangers in the movie Knowing

She is finally able to contact John through a gas station pay phone, and he tells her that the final numbers are the coordinates of her mother’s house, which he believes is safe, while the caves won’t protect them from the solar flare’s radiation. When panic erupts at the gas station following the government’s activation of the national Emergency Alert System and announcement of the solar flare, two of the whisper people hijack Diana’s car with the two children. Giving chase in another car, Diana is hit by a truck trying to run a red light, dying exactly at midnight, on the very day her mother predicted. Arriving back at Lucinda’s mobile home, John discovers the children are safe and comfortable in the presence of the whisper people. The whisper people are revealed to be celestial angel-like beings who invite the children to escape the destruction “to help everyone start over”. At first, Caleb is very reluctant to go when his father is not invited to come along; John successfully persuades him to go, saying that they will be together again eventually. The whisper people leave Earth on their ship, a massive structure resembling Ezekiel’s Wheel, as other ships also depart Earth. As anarchy reigns in New York City and Boston John arrives to be with his parents and sister just as the solar flare strikes Earth and incinerates all life on the planet. Caleb and Abby are dropped off on an Earth-like planet with at least two moons as the other ships drop off their passengers. The movie ends as the two children, dressed in white, run toward a large white tree, possibly being the fabled Tree of Life.

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