Vista is Dead

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After much deliberation and a lot of planning, the changeover from Vista to Windows 7 was scheduled to commence as soon as the August/September issue of Professional Imagemaker was confirmed as ‘passed for press’ by the printer. Changing from one operating system (OS) to another is a process so painful that it is normally better to buy a new machine and run that up in parallel, making the change over a longer period of time. This luxury was not available to us as the workstation is worth over £3,000 – so an upgrade it was. Even the word upgrade should be used with caution, we never upgrade any OS, we always start from scratch on a freshly formatted drive; experience teaches that this is, mostly, a less troublesome method.

The readers will be well aware of your editor’s loathing of Vista. The only reason we put up with it so long was because it enabled the use of 16GB of RAM. To be fair, once running, it has been stable and we were always able to run up to 10 applications simultaneously while magazine-making. Crashes and freezes were relatively rare. The main bugbear was the time it was taking to get started in the morning. It had got to the stage when we used to switch it on as we got into the morning shower so that it was ready for the password when we emerged, and then up and ready to go by the time we came back to the office after breakfast. Sitting watching it grind through interminable updates was never a good start to the day, even less so if somebody was on the phone waiting for a confirmation of a diary date – it was sometimes 20 minutes before we could see the electronic diary!

So how do you go about a re-install while keeping your business afloat and your valuable intellectual property and accounts files safe? It is a dilemma faced by many photographers and so we thought it worthwhile sharing the way we go about it.

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What our members say
Why I like the Societies: Like-Minded people to learn from. Being part of a respected Organisation. - Christopher S
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Convention testimonials Just a quick mail to say a huge Thanks for a great weekend, I really enjoyed it. I learnt loads and I hope that the people who attended my talks got a lot from them. The feed back at them was great ..and loads of great questions asked during them. Podge
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Photo Quote: Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory. Diane Arbus

There are 227 days to get ready for the SWPP Convention and Trade Show at The Hilton London Metropole Hotel ...
which starts on Tuesday 8th January 2013