Don’t pay for software you don’t need — Part 3

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	TOP STORY Don’t pay for software you don’t need — Part 3
	By Woody Leonhard Few Microsoft publicity efforts have ever drawn as much attention as last week’s 20-minute Windows 8 sneak preview. If you’ve heard that Windows 8 is for the dogs or that it will look like a phone, you haven’t heard the whole story.

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The full text of this column is posted at WindowsSecrets.com/top-story/don’t-pay-for-software-you-don’t need-—-part-3/ (opens in a new window/tab).

Columnists typically cannot reply to comments here, but do incorporate the best tips into future columns.[/td]

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Woody, I found that in my win 7 explorer upper right “search” it failed to find any of a large number of files I know matched. If I go to the Start search, it
kicks off and does find these files. it does work as expected in 32b win 7, but the 64b wrinkle had caught me by surprise.

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Have you done a complete index of files. This article, and many more similar articles, from Windows Seven Forums shows how to index for better search results.

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Have you done a complete index of files. This article, and many more similar articles, from Windows Seven Forums shows how to index for better search results.

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Have you done a complete index of files. This article, and many more similar articles, from Windows Seven Forums shows how to index for better search results.

all indexed. just works from Start search, not from explorer search in 64b Win 7 ultimate.

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I would like to react on ‘Don’t pay for a version of Windows you don’t need‘

At home we have a Windows Home Server v1 that contains all our data.
We have 2 desktops that are running Win7 Home Premium.
We also have 1 portable for our eldest daughter that included Win7 Home Premium when we bought it.

Because she has to take the portable to school, she couldn’t access her documents there, because they were only available on our home network.

At work there are several colleagues who are constantly on the road and have the same problem. Therefore they are using offline files.

When I tried that on our daughters portable it didn’t seem to work. All menu-items are visble in Win7 Home Premium but they are not working.
Therefore I have upgraded the portable to Win7 Pro, and we are using offline files now.

So ‘offline files’ are another reason to upgrade from Win7 Home Premium to Win7 Pro.

Jan Didden

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Microsoft would also have you believe that you need Pro to run as a server (a puppeteer) in a Remote Desktop session. It’s true that Windows Pro lets you do that, but other products (including LogMeIn) also work well.

This may well be true in the USA where Internet access is fast and reliable, but it is most certainly not true in countries such as South Africa where few people can afford high speed access. I provide desktop support and I have tried a large number of remote login systems including LogMeIn, various flavors of VNC etc and they are so slow as to make it almost impossible to use them, with the sole exception of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop. For this reason I insist that my clients run Windows Pro. I cannot understand why only Microsoft seems to have got this right.

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It just irks me to chime in on two levels.

1. Technically IMHO Woody is 100% correct. I had used his basic idea in my own blog and my extensive experience with everyday mom and pop home users confirms Woody’s statements in many ways.

2. People can believe anything and they will believe what they want to believe and/or have have become used to believing. That seems to be true for NASA’s moon landings being a fake, German concentration camps never having existed and Registry hacks shaving 50% off of Windows 7 boot time as well as many other things.

Woody, the more “hate mail” you get over this issue the better you have stirred the pot! Congratulations, well done!

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re: Windows Search
rather than tell us that windows search is great, how about pointing to some links that show how to do SIMPLE searches for file names, and how to search across the WHOLE drive, including system files, etc
I have given up on the Windows 7 search, adn I don’t have time to do queries.
I just want to search for file names across all my indexed drives.

I have downloaded “Everything” search program, and it is great.
type in names, it assumes “and” concatenation, partial words can be entered, and it finds what I want.

any links to HOW to do simple searches in windows, JUST to access file names, NOT to access what is in the files,etc?

thasnk
Nick

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I have downloaded “Everything” search program, and it is great.
type in names, it assumes “and” concatenation, partial words can be entered, and it finds what I want.

any links to HOW to do simple searches in windows, JUST to access file names, NOT to access what is in the files,etc?

thasnk
Nick

I agree regarding Everything. It is a heck of a lot faster finding Files in Windows7 than Windows7 search is. If you ever want to search inside of files take a look at Agent Ransack. I found it again faster than Windows7 search even when just looking for filenames.

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The big issue with these articles is the one size fits all mindset. Popular as they may be, they tend to annoy me for their overall generality and simplification.

I will take just one hit at Windows Search – the preconfiguration that makes the indexer run after each boot must be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Everybody complains about how Windows is slow to boot and some illuminated Redmond brains decided to start one of the most disk hogging apps ever, at a time where the disk is used intensively. That is sufficient for me to have stopped using it.

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I rarely am moved to comment on Woody’s stuff or WS in general, but I’m pretty sure that Windows Firewall CAN be configured to be an “outbound” firewall if you are willing to play around with its ruleset. I thought of it when the article was first published and was reminded of it again with this Part 3. Seems to me it would be a better recommendation if it was reworded to “sure, you can do it–but it’s not worth most people’s trouble.” Can someone confirm that Windows Firewall does have that capability? Thanks.

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Can someone confirm that Windows Firewall does have that capability? Thanks.

You are absolutely correct. It is an outbound firewall too, and I think it is configured by default to be an outbound firewall. There are a number of pre-existing outbound rules and you can add to those too.
I also think that, by default, when a program tries to access the network without being allowed, you are asked if that is to be allowed. I think I have seen it happening a few times, at the time my favorite paid firewall had no version for 7 x64.

Anyway, I will add that I use a 3rd party firewall, that doesn’t deal just with network connections. Malware, these days, can overcome Windows protections with some ease, even if Windows 7 is the most secure Windows ever. A decent firewall will add aditional protection against malware, as well. Forgetting this is just another consequence of the oversimplification that these articles suffer from, as I wrote in my previous post.

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I’m sure there is validity to your article(s) but I’ll stick with my paid for anti virus and firewall solution because I’d rather not trust MS with my PC’s security. The old adage … of putting all the eggs in one basket. Otherwise though thanks for some though provoking ideas.

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Re: “Don’t pay for a version of Windows you don’t need”
XP Mode is great. I use it alot. But as far as I can tell, the link that was provided for VMWare isn’t a very satisfactory replacement. First, it calls itself trialware. Hardly free. Second, you have to have (and presumably pay for) a copy of Windows XP. XP Mode gives you XP for free.

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In my channels, 7 Pro is about $40 more for a bundled copy of XP. I don’t see VMWare offering that. Plus, it’s a whole lot easier to setup.

“Bob might have jumped up faster, or Clippy could have offered his helpful admonitions a fraction of a millisecond more quickly.” I find this hilarious, but I’m not sure your “target” audience would. A single usage model will rarely work for your average power user, let alone the majority of them. And I doubt your average vanilla user would remember Bob.

I really like the idea behind this series, but I’d like to see more options–particularly in areas that are still relevant, like backups. Windows 7’s backup utility doesn’t offer offsite storage or realtime protection–two keys if you really value your data.

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I really like the idea behind this series, but I’d like to see more options–particularly in areas that are still relevant, like backups. Windows 7’s backup utility doesn’t offer offsite storage or realtime protection–two keys if you really value your data.

I think the point of this series is that for a very large majority of home users, there is no advantage to buying for add-on programs…Win7 utilities work good enough. And often the add-ons do harm (registry cleaners for instance).

There are always exceptions, see my post here about Agent Ransack. But I use that at work, where on occasion I have demanding search requirements that I rarely if ever have at home.

After 20+ years of Windows versions we’ve all become conditioned to adding on programs to compensate for Windows’ deficiencies. This series is saying that with Win7, the native OS’s utilities are finally acceptable for the average user.

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I Windows 7’s backup utility doesn’t offer offsite storage or realtime protection–two keys if you really value your data.

Jonathan,

And just what stops me from taking my USB drive off site?:confused:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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I made the same observation concerning this. Does Woody have a response to that?

Old geeks never stop programming

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This is a great series of articles…but I find that Win7 search, like Google Desktop search, overlooks files. OK, maybe it could find them but its indices are wrong. So what, the result is the same, it doesn’t find what I know is there.

I’ve found, repeatedly, the only reliable file search is Agent Ransack. It doesn’t store indices so they can’t get out of date. It has an optional advanced search that lets you use regular expressions for both file names and text strings within files. And, it’s free!

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Right On Woody

I will admit to being a Windows 7 junkie. I use it in many places and find it to be a great piece of software. Not perfect but at least Best of Class. I also teach for a 50+ organization where I have a class called Wonderful World of Windows 7. I take my students through many of the topics that Woody, Fred and the entire Windows Secrets crew discuss each week. You can discuss with IT professionals about “outbound” fire walls and registry tricks all day long, however for the average home user not wanting to spend his/her life in customizing an OS, Home Premium is very closew to a home run.

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i find that the search function in win7 (start>search programs and files) to be unreliable. it finds virtually nothing in my documents folder, and some programs are invisible to it. while researching how to get it to work as some people claim it works, i have found many people writing about how useless it is.

and yes, i have done the indexing setup routine, checking and unchecking the appropriate boxes to index, and rebuilt the index, several times. it just doesn’t work very well. I use filelocater if i really need to locate a file.

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About outbound third-party firewalls — I have to agree that the cryptic messages of these programs really do not provide any security benefits to most of us. I have struggled with Comodo Firewall on Windows XP Pro for years, and I’d say about ten percent or fewer of its alerts have had any meaning at all to me. And almost all of those were “warnings” about perfectly benign and normal outbound events. The new Comodo Sandbox is more trouble than it is worth, because every program update seems to send something into the Sandbox, where updaters and installers cannot do what they need to do to keep the software secure and functional.

-- rc primak

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There’s sometimes more to it, depending on what you need/want. I use X1 Search because it allows me to quickly find and open any e-mail or document on my hard drive — either on the machine or from my iPhone. Windows Search won’t help me when I’m away and have only my phone.

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Woody’s articles were a great read, a wake up call to stay critical, but all the time I found myself muttering “yes but…”. The messages in this thread confirmed many of my “yes but”s.
Good informative articles *and* good, informative reactions.

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The last time I looked my Windows 7 firewall was a two way firewall. I do however, continue to use the two way firewall, Sygate, which is still available in SystemSuite.

I encourage all my students and computer club members to partition their drives. Most are making their own image of their C: drive for a full system backup. Also,by moving the User in Vista and Windows 7 to D: they are very capable of keeping their personal data backed up and away from C: by just copying to an external device. They pay attention to my characterizing the C:drive as the “war zone”.

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I recently upgraded to a new solid state disk (Crucial M4 256 Gig SSD) to replace my old 7200 rpm “spinning iron”. The replacement had dramatic results, improving my W7 boot time (per Soluto) from an average of almost 4 minutes down to a pretty consistant 56 seconds. Needless to say, I was thrilled. However, a few days later my Avast AV software subscription expired and I was about to renew it when I came across your recommendation from a month or two ago to stop paying for software I don’t need and decided to try Microsoft Security Essentials. What a bust that was! Suddenly my boot time on the new SSD had increased by a whopping 31 seconds and (per process explorer) now there was a huge new program taking up almost 30 megs of ram. After spending almost $450 and gaining a 400% improvement in boot-up speed, the huge performance hit associated with MSE just isn’t worth it. I’m back with Avast and once again enjoying the markedly improved boot speed that the SSDs are known for.

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I recently upgraded to a new solid state disk (Crucial M4 256 Gig SSD) to replace my old 7200 rpm “spinning iron”. The replacement had dramatic results, improving my W7 boot time (per Soluto) from an average of almost 4 minutes down to a pretty consistant 56 seconds. Needless to say, I was thrilled. However, a few days later my Avast AV software subscription expired and I was about to renew it when I came across your recommendation from a month or two ago to stop paying for software I don’t need and decided to try Microsoft Security Essentials. What a bust that was! Suddenly my boot time on the new SSD had increased by a whopping 31 seconds and (per process explorer) now there was a huge new program taking up almost 30 megs of ram. After spending almost $450 and gaining a 400% improvement in boot-up speed, the huge performance hit associated with MSE just isn’t worth it. I’m back with Avast and once again enjoying the markedly improved boot speed that the SSDs are known for.

Hi MitelInMyBlood,

How much RAM do you actually have installed on your Windows 7 PC? I have 4GB of installed and usable RAM on my Windows 7 64 bit systems, and consistently obtain less than one minute boot time using the standard 7200 RPM disk drive, and my laptops boot my 5400 RPM platter drives at not much more than one minute. Another thing to check is if you have Windows configured to manage your page file so it can dynamically change the size to fit the need of the moment. Something is bottlenecking resources on your system in a big way.

You mentioned you used Process Explorer. Try supplementing Autoruns, and WhatsInStartup to further evaluate what is going on. On Autoruns, focus on the Logon tab as Autoruns reports much more information than can be easily digested.

Many applications insist on starting helper applications to speed up loading, but are not necessary with today’s powerful systems – they just bog your computer down. You can sort through the ones that are third party (not Microsoft) to determine which are vital and which are a waste of resources. Right clicking the processes will provide you with a context menu offering you, among other choices, searching the Internet for information available on the selected process.

Check out this Microsoft Answers piece for many suggestions and links to improve startup and general performance in Windows 7.

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I have never read so much rubbish as this article. If you want to promote VMware Workstation, you should tell people that it is NOT free and that they need to purchase XP also, but that it offers advantages over XP mode. And I am appalled that you send people to a dodgy site offering a trial download of an outdated VMware version (7.1.3, current is 7.1.4), pretending to be free software. The proper approach would be to send them to VMware’s own site. You article was careless, under-researched, unprofessional, and a pale shadow of the authoritative standards to which Windows Secrets used to aspire. Stirring the pot is fine, but please stir in something useful.

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I am under the belief that if you want to use software based RAID 1, you need at least Pro. I have a dual eSata card, and run RAID 1 on the two drives in the external enclosure. I could not get W7 home to set it up with a software based RAID 1, and had to upgrade to get that feature. It seems to me that for simple redundancy of files (raw video files for example) that software RAID should be fine. Or am I off base on this? Perhaps you have some opinions on using non hardware based RAID? I always assume that the drivers are likely to be an issue on these non proprietary server machines, and that if I wanted true RAID that I would buy a machine that is a workstation class box with a RAID card in it. But MS should be able to do at least redundancy at a RAID 1 level, which they have been doing for some years now.

So for RAID without the hardware, Pro seems needed. It’s about the same as buying a RAID card.

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I am under the belief that if you want to use software based RAID 1, you need at least Pro.

Don’t know about RAID1, but RAID0 works fine with Win7 Home Premium.

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Don’t know about RAID1, but RAID0 works fine with Win7 Home Premium.

RAID 0 is not much use on a typical home system…RAID1, on the other hand, is really helpful and I’m using it to build a repository of home videos from VHS/8mm tapes and family photos. Time has not been good to tapes and photographic papers.

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Hi Woody!

About Microsoft Security Essentials — I am getting very fed up with Microsoft’s refusal to release Release Notes about what they are changing in MSE and when and why. They are the only major Security Company which refuses to post Release Notes anywhere, claiming that all details about MSE are “Proprietary”. The new update isn’t announced, and isn’t being offered through MS Updates. Instead, it is being “phased in”, whatever that means. I have had it with this under the covers approach to security. You can have your “free protections” — I am officially in the market for something else which runs as a Native 64-bit Windows 7 active security program.

More disturbing is Microsoft’s cavalier attitude towards its users, as expressed in the Support Forums by Rob Koch, apparently some official within the Microsoft support community:

“The first two beta steps are traditional processes and may or may not still be done with MSE in the current process. However, no one should typically ‘want’ this code since at that point it’s still at a high potential risk of having failures in operation, possibly even including something as severe as operating system damage. So the first point that the code is truly considered ‘stable’ is when it is released via the official website for download, which is what you are discussing.”

It’s like Microsoft can’t even tell us when the new updates are stable enough for critical production computers, and we aren’t allowed to try to outguess them on when a Public Release is really the Stable Public Release, or some such nonsense. I’m at least waiting until MS Updates offers this program update, if it ever does.

By the way, at your own Ask Woody blog site, when are you going to give any further guidance about the June Microsoft Windows Updates, now that July’s Patch Tuesday is upon us?

-- rc primak

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It seems to me that for simple redundancy of files (raw video files for example) that software RAID should be fine. Or am I off base on this? Perhaps you have some opinions on using non hardware based RAID?

I would strongly caution against using software RAID 1 for simple redundancy. It is not reliable. You are actually safer using a single disk with a USB or eSATA drive for backups. Hardware RAID is far more reliable, and even then I can’t stress enough the importance of mutiple backups. The purpose of RAID arrays is to keep systems up and running in critical environments that cannot have downtime. It is not, nor was ever intended to be a backup system to protect the data. That’s the job of backup software and offline disks or tape.

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As previously said, one size doesn’t fit all. Particularly with XP mode. A better alternative to VMWare for a home user is Oracle’s VirtualBox. However, if you want to run a copy of XP, you’ll need a valid license for it. Unlike Win7 Pro which comes with a license for a virtual copy of XP. So the alternative to upgrading to Pro is not free. However, I will say that if you have a valid transferable license for XP, running it in VirtualBox is far superior to running “XP Mode”. XP Mode was provided as a crutch for enterprise environments to deal with legacy applications until those apps are upgraded. It was not intended for home users to be able to run legacy games on. For home users, XP mode is generally pretty clunky and not intuitive.

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One other thing that Win7 Pro makes VERY easy is mirrored drives. I couldn’t get a BIOS-based RAID driver to work but was just a mouse click in Win7 Pro

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Woody.. your “ranting” about how good Windows7 is.. is why I let my subscription lapse. There is.. an argument to be made (in my opinion) that if it were not for all the third party developers..that MS has bought out.. and incorporated the software in its latest version of Windows, Windows would not be the program it is today. As someone who seems to be on the MS payroll you forget that those third party developers hire people and need a market as well.

Here is an interesting challenge for you.. Write about ALL the companies who developed software that is now incorporated in the latest version of Windows.. and, where are those workers now?

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Firstly, although windows has “help and support”, there isn’t a method incorporated with a “how to” manual.

In otherwords, when customers want to repartition their disks, there aren’t any instructions on “how to” do it.

However, third party programs like Acronis Disk Director provide a slew of help and guidance to partition the disk. In this aspect, I give Microsoft a “D”, while i would give a third party provider a “A+”

Secondly, why would anyone want to buy MSOffice, when OpenOffice is “free”.

There are more instances where Microsoft has failed and in investing in third party software/programs is a wiser decision.

Ultimately, Microsoft doesn’t care how you use their o.s. / money maker. Windows is only a medium for managing personal data and running third party programs that are exceptionally engineered.

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Woody,

I 1000% disagree with your idea that you don’t need a separate search application but agree there is no need to pay for it. I use the free FileLocator Lite from http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=filelocatorlite&page=download.

I’m an Oracle data architect and DBA normally working on server versions of Windows OSes. On my Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit boxes I cannot get Windows to search inside my SQL scripts. These are text files with a .SQL extension. In Windows XP there was a simple Registry change (http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1250/) that made Windows Search search all files irregardless of extension. This registry change doesn’t work on this OS. I’ve done much research and could not find any solution that worked and finally gave up and installed FileLocator Lite. It’s a great well designed very flexible utility that even support regular expressions. Windows Search is broken waste of time in my opinion.

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Regarding the indexing/search applications and your statement “Look for a primer on Windows 7 search here in Windows Secrets Newsletter later this year. It’s an important topic, for which a few tips can make a world of difference.”
In general I find the search features in Win7 and Office 2010 great compared to some of the older versions, BUT, I find the search feature in Outlook 2010, that used to work very well before, always seems to need sorting prior to using instead of being pre-sorted as part of the automatic sorting features. AND, even though I have both Win7 and Office 2010 64-bit, the Outlook sort of messages seems dreadfully slow when necessary.
I hope your future primer intends to cover this area.

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I also believe you have other problems than MSE. For example, I have a 7200 rpm HDD (not an SSD) My boot times are, To the sign on screen: approx. 33 sec, after entering password, to total boot ready to use, connected to wireless network: approx. 9 additional seconds for a total boot time of approx. 42 seconds. I would definitely use What’s In Startup to find how many useless apps are loading at start up. Most of the apps that set themselves up in the start up cache do not have to be running in real time with today’s modern PCs. Here’s what my start up looks like:

28137-WhatsInStartup

Just 4 apps starting on my laptop. Plenty.

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This article needs one erroneous point corrected. Windows 7 Home should be replaced with Windows 7 Pro. The Pro SKU is the minimum version that allows for setting up a Limited User Account and Software Restriction Policies together, which if having spent the 120 seconds it takes to do this, will negate any need for antivirus software and other junkware. Also, FileSearchEX has saved people allot of frustration with using the built in Windows 7 search … but that’s just a nice-to-have.

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“Disk partitioners — Yes, you need to partition your hard drives in some very specific circumstances — when you’re going to dual-boot, for example — but for most PC users, disk partitions are a waste of time and effort. I’m fond of saying that there’s nothing you can do with a partition that you can’t do better with a folder. When you do need to create a partition (or, more frequently, juggle partitions because you didn’t set them up right in the first place), Windows 7 has all the tools you need for simple partitioning chores.”

Well, I intend to partition the hard drive because I have perfectly functional hardware and software that works in Windows XP but not Windows 7. Does Windows 7 have suitable software? (Years ago I used Partition Magic for this purpose on a work computer, but don’t know if it’s still the best way to go.)

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I must really be missing something because I cant find the search features I have in X1 in Win 7 search. Maybe the primer that was mentioned will clear things up

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