Inside Delphian

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for 64-Bit Systems Released

Most of this post only applies to you if (a) you have a Windows 7-based computer, and (b) you have the 64-bit operating system.

A "Service Pack" isn't a new product; it's a major release of a given software product that offers updates, bug fixes, and/or enhancements. While many such items may be delivered from time to time by way of the regular Windows Update function, a Service Pack, well, packs everything into a single installable file. You install the one file, and all the goodies that come with it are installed. You may/may not notice any differences in your software–be it Windows, or perhaps Microsoft Office–following the installation.

The first Service Pack for the Windows 7 64-bit operating system (a mammoth file, by the way) contains quite a few items, but the following two may be most recognizable to most people:

• The connection between Windows and HDMI audio devices has been made more robust, and a fix has been instituted that constantly maintains the connectivity.
• XPS documents (a proprietary Microsoft format for documents that is similar to PDF) were sometimes not printing properly when the documents were mixed-mode; meaning, that there were both portrait and landscape pages in the documents. This glitch has been addressed.

Other changes made were a little on the exotic side, at least for most users (things like the behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality and support for Advanced Vector Extensions AVX).

After the requisite reboot, I can't say my 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate looked, 'felt', or ran differently. Still, it is highly recommended that you install most recommended updates seen in Windows Update, and especially Service Packs.

Windows 7 - Service Pack 1 Released

Those of you who use a Windows-based computer, and who upgraded to or use Windows 7, will want to know this news: the first major service pack for Windows 7 has just been released. If you have your Windows set to Automatic Updates, you will get notification of this, but you will also have to specifically choose the update from any recent available updates.

So what's a Service Pack?

A Service Pack is basically a collection of known bug fixes, and sometimes improvements or new functionality. For instance, I'm creating this post on our desktop computer, which is running Windows XP. Because XP has been around so long–can it really be nine years now?–there have been several Service Packs. I have installed all service packs on this machine, up to and including Service Pack 3.

Should you install a Service Pack?

My short answer is this: yes. My longer answer is a little more involved...

As most service packs contain bug fixes (which can themselves include security fixes), I think they're an important consideration. Even if a service pack includes very little new functionality (as in the first one for Windows 7), the bug fixes and/or security enhancements alone should be considered. The other reasons you should install a service pack have to do with compatibility. Eventually, as with Windows XP, other programs (or possibly other hardware) will require the new service pack, though they might not right away.

What does Windows 7 Service Pack 1 mean to me?

About a half-hour to an hour, and anywhere from approximately 30 megabytes of disk space to several hundred megabytes of disk space (depending on what's already been updated). If you've kept your Windows 7 updated, the process shouldn't take too long, or consume too much disk space.

OK, how do I install Windows 7 Service Pack 1?

If Automatic Updates is "on", go to the Start button and search for "Windows Update" (just type it in). Are there new updates? If yes, look for a link that tells you a number of "important updates are available". Click that link, and check the check box for Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Click the OK button, install the Service Pack (it will download, and that's the most lengthy process). Reboot your computer when asked to. When you log-in again, you should get a message telling you it's done!

For more information on Windows 7 Service Pack 1, have a look at Microsoft's information pages. There are several different Web pages available, but the following one sums things up nicely, and provides you with a link on how to install and where to get the Service Pack (if it's not available to you yet): http://bit.ly/Windows7_SP1.

I just installed SP1 this morning on one of the laptops. Things seem OK so far (a good sign).

Happy computing!

Death in the Family? Here's an unpleasant collection agency story...

This is a real story. It's not related to my business, so I want to share with you the two reasons I'm publishing it here. The first is that if you have someone close to you die, you won't want to go through this. The second is that it's too lengthy--don't worry, it's only a few hundred words--for most social networking sites. But it needs to be told so you'll be aware you have rights and should not be harassed by the uncaring.

After spending several quite awful months in the hospital, my mother died of cancer in October, 2008. I obtained several copies of the death certificate, and, duly distributed them. One went to Toronto Housing, the umbrella company that rented her apartment to her.

Fast forward...

Today (May 6, 2010), and less than a week ago, phone calls came into our home phone number for "Helen Neilly" (yes, my mother). I tell the callers she's been dead for 1 1/2 years. They don't have proof, so they don't believe me. This collection agency--I don't know how to spell their name, but it sounds like "IKO"--tells me I have to submit a death certificate to them so they can close her file. I was my mother's executor, so I asked them for details: was there, for example, an outstanding debt? They would not tell me because the matter was confidential. Go figure! Stupidity rules.

When I told the guy today that I have a fax confirmation to Toronto Housing from November, 2008, well, that didn't count. The fax wasn't to the collection agency, so they didn't believe in it. It was my problem, or it was Toronto Housing's problem. I couldn't figure out which, as this guy hung up pretty quickly.

Also, and this seems merely an inconvenience for this collection agency, it's *against the law* for them to make these calls without having first contacted me in writing. In Canada, collection agencies must conform to The Collection Agencies Act. Among other things, one of the first statements in the Act is "A collection agency may not: Contact you until six days have passed from sending you a written notice of the following:..." (emphasis is mine). This agency has not only not contacted me in writing, they will not even bring themselves to tell me what the issue at hand is. 

Icing on the cake? I was told in my second last call that unless or until I comply with their vague demands, they will not stop phoning me.

And the legitimacy of collection agencies is where? Certainly, it goes down the toilet with the kind of uncaring, insensitive, rude people that continue to harass me. It really causes me to question the 'skills' these types must have had to have been hired in the first place. Sure aren't communications skills.

Next stop? I know something about my rights--and you should too if you're ever put in this situation--so will probably be contacting the Ministry of Consumer Services. I would truly like to see this or any other agency like it put under the scrutiny of the public eye, to somehow account for their actions. Would they, if they could, defend themselves on the basis of their "bottom line"?

Collection agency 'people': how do you live with yourself? What if you were on the receiving end of calls like the ones you've been making to me; would that be okay with you?

This is where commerce is headed ;)

One of the classes I teach at Seneca College is Virtual Fashion Retailing. It's a course I was given much latitude in shaping, and this is my second year teaching it. The students are all sixth semester students, and my mug is one of the last they'll see before heading off into the Wild West of the fashion industry. Technology changes rapidly in every field, and this includes e-tailing. With that in mind, I'd like to talk about some current trends in e-Commerce, then putting my 'fortune telling' hat on--and clearly, tongue-in-cheek--predict the future of electronic retailing.

E-commerce stands for electronic commerce. Electronic commerce is basically defined as the buying and selling of electronic goods and/or services over the Internet. Many brick-and-mortar (i.e., real) stores turned to e-Commerce early on, and are now called multi-channel retailers. Multi-channel retailers sell their goods or services in more than one way.

So the course I teach includes things like a brief history of e-Commerce, various classifications of retailers, the pros and cons of e-tailing, and, a fairly large component: the creation of a mock-up online store.

As I got started this year, I noted two interesting trends. One concerned a collection of products that not only sold well in the depths of the recession, but actually increased its sales (the merchandise included high end skin care and anti-aging products). The other trend was that some big-name retailers were beginning not only to target mobile phone users, but to actually develop marketing expressly for cell and smartphones. I thought, well, this is in keeping with reality. More and more, people are turning to smartphones for everything from social networking to televised events. So why not more commerce? This emerging and growing market is now referred to as "m-commerce". Of course!

In thinking about these interesting developments, I decided to don my 'fortune-telling' hat and peer, rather fearlessly, into the future of technology and commerce to see what's just around the corner...

Cloudy, at first, but then from the mists of the future the following name appeared: "r-commerce". I, too, thought it meant radio commerce. But the word spelled itself out and I found out it meant ... retina-commerce. Wow, thought I: they're going to target our eyeballs! The images didn't stay with me long enough to figure out exactly how this would work, but it seems it had something to do with 3-D images being projected onto our retinas, and ... well, I lost the signal. I wondered how they'd work sound into it.

Many were the images of futuristic marketing and advertising that appeared to me--some for but a second, others long enough for me to grasp their meaning. The last clear trend I saw happening came to me, again, as a word: "si-commerce". What the heck? Visions of Star Trek and other far-away and fantastic worlds began to bombard my consciousness. I couldn't for the life of me figure out the "si" part at first. I thought it might be "science", or "significant insight", or any number of other things. And then the words cleared up. This new marketing technique would involve subcutaneous implants. Wow! So in the future we'll have advertising chips implanted under our skin, and they'll deliver data directly to our bloodstream. Fantastic. Hmmm, I wondered aloud, how will they figure out a way to make us pay a monthly subscription for that? And what kind of bank machine or debit system will that entail?

The visions stopped, I took off my fortune-telling hat, and saw my laptop sitting on the dining room table. It was all a bad dream, or was it? e-Commerce and m-commerce are re ... sorry, hang on a second, I need to grab a phone call coming in somewhere in my shoulder.