Windows 7

Operating System:

I decided to do some research on Windows 7. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing in July of 2009. It came out only three years after Vista. This makes sense to me because I have a number of bad things about Vista (though I have never used it). What makes it unique is that it will be compatible with the older versions and with Windows Vista. Some other new features are a new taskbar, the, “Superbar” and a home networking system called the HomeGroup. The moviemaker will not come with Windows 7 which is not a big deal to me since it always fried when I tried to use it anyway. After my interview with my brother in law, I think our school made a good move by skipping Vista. Many companies are in the process upgrading to this system so to keep up with the times, we will all need to upgrade. These are some of the requirements of Windows 7.
 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
 DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Techie

I talked to my brother in law for the "Interview a Techie" project. He is currently employed at NML in Milaukee. My wife also works at NML as a systems analysist but she does not consider herself a techie. I asked Jason about the opperating system that they use. He explained that they recently changed over to Windows 7 from XP. He explained that for a large corporation, it is not viable to be up with the latest trends so they skipped right past Vista. They have 5000 employees downtown and service 15,000 throughout the country. For them, it is a huge labor process to upgrade. It is also a huge labor process to keep out hackers and remove bugs from the system. Since Windows is an accepterd platform throughout the world, it works well. Although there are some MACs in the company, they are used in the advertising department and mainly used for creative services.

Computer Architecture Activities.

Eric and I watched the Pirates of Silicon Valley last night. I had no idea how devious Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were. I would even say that Steve was a bit if a nut job. The movie was both entertaining and informative. It amazes me that they were able to take something like the Altaire and turn into something that everyone could use. Watching those humble beginnings to what they have become now is quite amazing. After we watched that, we watched the Triumph of the Nerds movie as well. It was nice to watch the movies in that order because it filled in a lot of the gaps. For use as technology leaders, I think that these were very important movies for us to watch. I am still using a PC but I have seen the advantages of each.

Computer Architecture 1

There is hope! Prior to this last class, I was wondering how it was going to be possible to wrap up everything by the end of the program, now I feel there is hope!

On the topic of what was learned this week. The video we watched on computers was very thought provoking. The speed that computers can handle information is amazing to me. I still remember working on a Comodor 64 back in high school. My brother just thought it was the best thing ever. I really didn't care for it at all. I was more interested in games. We have lived an interesting era of being able to watch computers evolve into something completely amazing and transforming.

This week we will be taking apart a computer to learn what everything does. I look forward to it! I intend to take apart an old computer of mine and I will also leave it up in my room for student to view. Why not make it a learning experience for students as well?