The verdict from information on the Microsoft website? "It's impossible." Yes, they actually use the word "impossible" when I read most of the answers to questions like these.

I was looking at four hours to backup all the data from the hard-drive and then start a new installation, and probably countless hours more to keep the Windows 7 Ultimate settings and program settings.

I wasn't going to call customer service to waste my time, I've had these wasteful experiences in my time with them.

So I proceeded to search the internet for an answer from our friendly white hats and I found these instructions. I followed them exactly, and was able to downgrade.

The instructions provided in this post Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to any retail version can be used to downgrade any version of Windows 7.

I was able to downgrade and keep all the programs' settings and most of Windows 7′s settings. I saved a ton of time here.

I always try to keep a positive outlook on Puerto Rico as a whole, outside of politics. We all know, or you should know, that local politics will never amount to anything good for Puerto Rico, but, I digress.

If it weren't for the fact that I don't live on a fairly or highly traffic area, I would probably have my own shop now along with everyone's clients. Yet, for all I know not one of these shops will give me a chance.

I did after all run my own ISP from my living room's apartment in Philadelphia! That's on my resume. I find it hard to believe that not having a degree trumps that, do you?

I have had friends come to me complaining that a local computer shop took a month to fix their computer and then did the opposite of what they asked!

For example, one of my friends wanted the same exact motherboard replacement put into his Gateway computer so that he could use the software that came with his Gateway computer. After a month, he got it back, but it was a totally new non-Gateway motherboard and CPU. Granted, it was a better motherboard, not that munch faster, but he wasn't happy.

And to top it off, I had to take the computer back because it kept restarting. I had to explain to the person who repaired it that the memory type he installed could not be combined on this particular motherboard because the motherboard would only accept 1 stick of the type of memory he had installed (as per the motherboard manual). So we had to exchange two 256 MB sticks for one 512 MB stick. I wonder how long he would had kept the computer again if he had to diagnose the problem?

Guess what this friend does now? Yep, he comes to me. The last time I repaired a computer for him I had to order a motherboard from Canada, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. It was for a 64-bit motherboard for an eMachine that was bought a year earlier at Sams.

His wife was happy and it didn't take a month.

Here's something else I can bring a local computer shop: respect for your customers! Try getting that from a degree.

I can overclock computers and their graphic cards, diagnose problems caused by simple things like a bad BIO's setup, test memory sticks, program, etc., the list goes on.

How long should my resume be, before any of you shop owners get a clue?

If you enjoy entertaining your self with trivialities and puzzles you will enjoy trivia, you will not only entertain yourself you will also learn a lot about your beloved country!

http://www.gozatelo.com/trivia/

You can access the site in English or in Spanish.

——–

Te queremos invitar al único sitio de trivia en linea dedicado a la isla de Puerto Rico.

Si te encantan los rompe cabezas y trivialidades, te encantará un juego que no solo te entretendrá pero te aseguramos aprenderás algo nuevo sobre tu querida patria.

http://www.gozatelo.com/trivia/

Podrás disfrutar del sitio en español o en inglés.

My biggest consuming appliance is my air conditioner (AC), so I am searching for a solar powered AC unit. Many companies claim a savings on your bill of 70% with one of these units. But I have no idea how much of this claim is true. If anyone here has a solar powered AC unit, or know's someone on the island of Puerto Rico who has one I would really appreciate it if you could find out and tell me if these claims are true.

One of the prices I was quoted was $2,100 with installation, so the price is steep.

And so many tech companies are using them as a ploy and nothing more, no real intention on ever paying you a rebate unless you nag.

I never buy anything because of a rebate. I am the type of person who buys what he needs when he needs it. I don't much look for bargains either, I usually settle for what I think is a reasonable price for what I need.

Although I personally have never been stiffed on a rebate, I know plenty of people who have. And I have also read plenty of stories, on the Internet, and magazines, etc., about people who have been stiffed on them. I have, however, had to call several times and been made to wait up to two-months after I was suppose to have received the rebate, and always the story I got was an unlikely one—a fib if you will. "We didn't have your correct address," etc.

Currently, I am in to two more weeks of a rebate I wasn't paid on time. I will call them, again and again, until I get paid. These are the games these companies play, in the hopes that you will give up and go away, and I am sure plenty of people do just that. I bet these companies keep hundreds of thousands of dollars of rebate money playing these games, so the time spent playing them is lucrative for the companies, especially since they don't have to expend any resources on keeping your money.

I am the tech that keeps his computer running. And I have installed software like AVG's free antivirus and have helped him to understand it enough to use it himself. But as time goes on, he forgets how to use it. It's not one of the applications he runs often, and as he tells me, it's his advanced age that makes him forget. LOL!

So, due to his advanced age, he forgot that he had an antivirus and bought one because a window popped-up claiming that his computer was vulnerable! We can catch fraudulent advertising like this because we have seen it a thousand times and probably were smart enough not to fall for it the first time we encountered it. Not only did he pay $109! Can you believe it? He also bought malware:XP Antivirus 2008. Unbelievable!

This thing made his computer slower, and kept popping up his Internet dial-up connection at start-up. Sadly, there are many, many web surfers online with the same lack of knowledge that are had in just the same way.

Why do these companies continue to operate for so long. It's beyond me. The feds enjoy getting into everything, so where are the feds when you need them to step in? Clearly INNOVAGEST 2000 S.L. is running a fraudulent operation and should be shut down.

I have read about the consequences of personal blogging before, so this article is nothing new. But what I find strange, and I shouldn't, is how people always react.

Let's see, they read the article and then make comments like these:

At first, I thought I was reading the sophomore page of the student newspaper at Harding High in Yokelville, Ohio. Then I realized that it was the New York Times.
Just awful.

— Ego Nemo, Eastern U.S.

Why is this article on the top of the times home page?? This is what is important to us??

— ML, new york

Dear Ms. Gould: Thanks for exhibiting the empty narcissism of so much blogging. As for "Josh"'s article on you in the NYPost, all one can say is, what goes around comes around–and the hypocrisy of your talking about it like a "personal betrayal" is either audacious in its flagrant, cynical hypocrisy or depressing in its utter lack of self-awareness.

Like your tattoos, I'm fairly sure you'll regret all this by the time you get into your 40s. From now on, I'd urge you to refrain from mutually polluting your private life, and public discourse, with such things.

Best regards,

CTMathewes
Charlottesville, Virginia

— CTMathewes, Charlottesville, VA

If you have to make such comments, why read the article in the first place? The number one comment disparaging a personal blog or article is the one where the commentator is asking for the, however many, minutes it took to read the article back! As in "there goes 15-minutes of my life wasted."

Other outrages comments are an attack on the newspaper for placing the article on the frontpage the first day. "Is this what you call journalism? With so many things to report, such as the fight on cancer, the war, etc." Give me a break people. If I want to learn about cancer there are plenty of places online where I can go and read up on the latest treatments and even donate.

I am not a Gawker reader, never have been even though I have seen it mentioned so many times. And I really had no idea who Emily Gould was, and after reading some of her stuff on Gawker and seeing Emily Gould being interviewed I don't think I even want to know anymore. But her tragic online experience does have a lesson to teach. For example, without even placing my life out there in public like Emily Gould did, I can still feel how hurt these people are, and therein lies the lesson.

I am sure anyone who is writing about their personal life and about the people in their lives will take a step back after reading her article and think very hard before they continue or even start if they are contemplating such a dangerous move.

So… Yes! Articles like Emily Gould's essay do have value even despite the many comments attacking the article and the newspaper.

But did you know about these great security add-ons?

Key Scrambler – Although this add-on is not open source it's free version does protect you from key loggers when you are about to enter your user id and password on any web forms online. It encrypts your key strokes from the keyboard driver all the way to the browser. The commercial version does this for all your OS key strokes.

NoScript -This is another awesome security add-on. This one will not allow any website to run scripts unless you tell NoScript to allow them to do so.

I was in Puerto Rico at the time, between 1978 and 1980, when I was an arcade junky in Aguadilla Mall. We were living in el Munequin (a 16 story high-rise apartment building) on the 11th floor, apartment 1106.

Next to the building is the Aguadilla Mall, on the number 2 highway. There is a new wing across the number 2 now, as well. In the Mall's movie theater I saw movies like "Clash Of The Titans," "Super Man," "Mad Max," and all those great movies of the late 70s and early 80s. Those were the good old days!

But I digress.

What I really wanted to say and write about is that the video game arcade for me died in Philadelphia, PA. Most of the kids hanging out at the arcade at the time in center city were there to jump on the naive shits like me to steal any money we had left! Money that I needed to take the bus back home, or to buy a hot dog, or ice cream if it was summer. I don't think management gave a shit either about what was going on outside, even if it was perpetrated by the arcade's most visibly known customers. In the end my friends and I just stayed away, and the arcade quickly disappeared from our lives. In a year we were going nuts with the home video game consoles, the Commodore 64, and the Atari 8-bit computers–a new and exciting phase in our lives was starting.

Need I say more? I guess I should.

I have been using FreeSpire ever since it came out a few months ago and I haven't tried another Linux OS since (although I have looked at PCBSD, I like what I saw there but it wasn't enough to wean me out of FreeSpire.) To make matters even better, Jasp (Andrew Betts from the UK) provided us with XGL¹ for FreeSpire! Thank you Jasp! The FreeSpire team is working on integrating XGL into FreeSpire 2.0 and this should be available early in 2007. I can't wait.

I haven't installed Vista's betas at all, mainly because my computers are not top of the line and according to what I have been hearing Aero (Vista's equivalent to XGL needs a high-end graphics card to even work–I can't verify this of course). Also, from people who have compared XGL and Aero they all have the same thing to say, mainly that XGL is so much smoother and faster on even some $20 video cards!

I have to admit that when I first heard of Aero for Vista I thought all this was just eye-candy, but boy was I wrong. I actually find myself using these effects when working, especially the ability to peel back the top maximized window to look at info on windows in the background.

I can write all day about XGL and Linux and I bet you still will not be able to imagine it running better than seeing a demo of it. Here is an XGL & Linux demo I found at YouTube.

Between Vista's high-end computer needs and Microsoft's insane Vista licensing², and although I will have to buy Vista for the Windows applications I have to use for work and to learn how to use it so that I can keep repairing computers for the locals here, I can tell what my personal OS of the future will be. Can you?

Now all Linux needs is better Fonts and we can bring it to Windows in full force!

1. Correction from Jasp: "Compiz is the program that actually does all of the effects and manages your windows.

   Xgl is just a replacement for the X server that adds some functions needed to make compiz work. Just like X, it is merely an interface for drawing on the screen.

   Compiz manager… is the settings manager for compiz." [back]

2. Under changes to Microsoft's licensing terms, buyers of retail copies of Vista will be able to transfer their software to a new machine only once. If they want to move their software a second time, they will have to buy a new copy of the operating system. [back]