Considering a transition to Vista or the new Microsoft Office suite and wondering if your current computer can handle it? Thinking of investing in a new computer and want to make sure it’s compatible with Vista and Office in six months? Wondering how long you can expect to make the switch, and what you’ll have to deal with if you stick with your current OS and applications? These top ten tips are designed to give you an informed perspective on the current step in the technology transition.
1. Minimum system requirements for Vista
The minimum system requirements to be classified as compatible with Vista are an 800 megahertz processor and 512 megabytes of system memory. However, you’ll probably want to use your computer for more than just running an operating system. If you plan on running multiple applications and don’t want to run out of time for coffee while your computer opens email, your minimum requirements should meet the Vista Premium Ready designation requirements of a minimum 1 Gigahertz processor and 1 Gigabyte of computer memory. system. Bottom line, if you’re shopping for computer hardware in 2007, think “1 Giga x 1 Giga” at a minimum. “More really is better.”
2. The difference between Vista Capable and Vista Premium Ready
Vista compatible computers have the absolute minimum system requirements. Unfortunately, 800 megahertz and 512 megabytes won’t support the “Aero” interface with glass tabs and transparent windows. You may not think these nifty features are important right now, but after six months you’ll experience computer envy when the person sitting next to you on the plane, train, or coffee shop is using the new features to navigate the web. web or layered applications. Vista Premium Ready requires “1 Gig x 1 Gig” processor and system memory. Don’t be seduced by lower cost systems that have lower processor power or memory. It would be like putting bicycle tires on your new Mercedes, it may look good from the right angle, but you won’t get anywhere very fast. Look for the Premium logo and fill your tank with a double dose of Giga energy.
3. View Security
Microsoft Vista is Microsoft’s most secure operating system to date. It includes restrictive firewalls, tools to block spyware and phishing, and blocks some email scams aimed at stealing personal data. Internet Explorer 7 has three levels of warnings about possible phishing sites. The IE7 browser also quarantines malicious viruses. You can count on Microsoft to continually release updates and patches to maximize security and protection against new worms and viruses.
4. Vista Ease of Use
We have more access to data, images, music and files than ever before. As technology continues to advance, access to information expands exponentially. This creates new challenges to find the data, pictures, music and files you have stored, and this is one of the benefits of Vista. Use your mouse to navigate through folders as if you were shuffling cards in a game of poker, searching your hard drive, network, and the Internet quickly and efficiently. Vista is a very visually stimulating environment and as such it also has special features for digital camera enthusiasts.
5. Mobility View
When Windows XP was released five years ago, most businesses were using desktop computers. Now, nearly two-thirds of US business workers use laptops, and nearly 750,000 laptops were lost or stolen last year. Mobility increases productivity and comfort, but it also requires greater security. Vista includes Windows Bit-Locker, which encrypts the data on your hard drive in a way that makes it extremely difficult for anyone to access your valuable data if your laptop is lost or stolen. If you have customer contact data, sales forecasts, budget information, passwords, personnel files, or even your personal banking information stored on your laptop, you can imagine how valuable this encryption could be to you.
6. A note
This is the best underused app from Microsoft. This is the digital version of the notebooks and folders that most of us use to take notes in school. The program is organized into sections and tabbed notebook pages. Like other Office apps, you can type text, copy and paste from other apps, do calculations, and use Outlook contacts. What makes this more versatile is the option to take written notes and drawings from a pen-enabled device (tablet PC), treating your handwritten notes like regular files. You can even use your computer’s microphone to capture audio, and the notes you take are associated with the specific section of recorded audio at the time the note was made. Imagine being at a conference and taking short notes like “this will be on the final exam”, then searching the audio and text files for all instances of that notation (wow!). Play over your computer speakers, share files with friends who skipped class, and check your grades at the end of the semester. This same concept could easily be applied to contract negotiations and other business applications. To take full advantage of this app, you need a pen-enabled PC (tablet) with a microphone, speakers, and OneNote. Once you experience OneNote, it’s more versatile than you ever imagined, and it’s as easy as pen on paper.
7. Ribbon Replacement Toolbars
Get ready for a learning curve with the new Office apps. Familiar toolbars are replaced with smart ribbons. The good news is that smart ribbons only display icons and options that apply to the app and embedded objects. For example, if you insert a chart, the features of the chart will be visible. If you don’t have a chart, the chart options will not be visible. While this eliminates clutter, it will also initially create some confusion when learning the new buttons. Sometimes icons will appear and sometimes they won’t, depending on the objects in your document or file. This can create a “where did that go?” while learning the new suite of Office applications. The best advice is that you “like what you’re used to”, so get used to the new Office Ribbons and you’ll like them perfectly.
8. stand out
The new version of Excel is just what you’d expect from bean counters, it’s bigger and prettier. The revamped spreadsheet can now support over a million rows and 16,000 columns, as if budgeting and forecasting weren’t enough. Three-dimensional, shaded and transparent effects make graphics more elegant. “Conditional formatting” makes it easy to apply icons or colors to cells based on content or value, making it much easier to spot trends. These are important features for people who need to review and approve their budget for new hardware!
9. word
If you weren’t convinced yet about making the transition to the new Office Suite, consider this, file extensions have changed again. You may remember the last significant Office transition when you had to save your Word documents in a format that your friends, colleagues, and clients could read with their previous versions of Office. Well, the happy days are here again. The new version of Word saves files as efficient and secure compressed XML files with a “.docx” extension. If you want to share your new “.docx” file with as many users as have the current version of Office, you’ll need to “Save As” a “.doc” file by selecting “Word 97-2003 Document” for each file you want to share. If you think this is a drawback, imagine being one of the “Word 97-2003 .doc” users when everyone else has started migrating to the new “docx” XML file format. If you don’t update, you’ll need to download a compatibility pack just to view and edit the new docx files. However, if you update to the new version of Word, you can open and edit old and new file formats with no problem. This is quite important.
10.Perspective
Outlook also gets a facelift and more security under the hood. The new version includes revamped spam controls and anti-phishing technology. It also includes enhanced search features that search your files and emails. Enhanced tools for calendar functions, flagging tasks, and highlighting messages with assigned colors make Outlook a more powerful integrated tool for consolidating scheduling and communication management. For example, use an email message to create a task, associate a priority level, and assign the task to resources. You can then associate the task with a calendar reminder for automated email alert reminders, meeting notices, and on-time or late-due tracking, if applicable. Spending ten minutes activating Outlook tools can improve hours of collaborative performance, communication, and long-term schedules.
With these top ten tips, you can be the 1 Gig guru. It is always a personal challenge to determine when to make the next technological investment in hardware or software. Being aware of trends and being prepared for transitions can help you gain greater satisfaction from your hardware or software purchases. For more information on Vista and Office products, visit the Microsoft website.
______________________________________________________
words of wisdom
“Change your thoughts and you will change your world.”
-Norman Vincent Peale
“Engage, communicate, collaborate and change the course of the world around you, or just wait and your life will be assigned to you.”
-John Mehrmann
“If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”
-Oprah Winfrey
______________________________________________________
You may freely distribute this article, print it, sell it, or include it as part of a bundle as long as it is intact, unchanged, and provided in its original format with credit to Executive Blueprints Inc.