Firewire sucks and Vista to The Rescue

So I had moved my very large My Documents folders to my external HD rather quickly - 25 minutes - via a firewire. It took 10 hours to move it back from the external HD to my computer. That SUCKED!!!

Furthermore it was not necessary - WIndows 7 packaged up everything I had in Windows XP into what it calls Windows.old - literally everything was there and there was no need to move anything...oh well.

On a more interesting topic, I had said that all of my deivces had automatically been discovered and setup - I was wrong. My wireless HP printer did not install - so I tried to install it manually - but no luck as Windows 7 did not have the driver. I then went to the HP site but they did not offer any Widnows 7 drivers for my high end printer - seriously?!?

I never thought I would say this but Vista ended up saving me! I wondered if I just installed the 64-bit Vista driver what would happen. Sure enough, I installed the driver, Windows 7 "upgraded" that driver and now my printer works even though HP officially does not offer a Windows 7 driver for it!!!

Impressive Install!

So I copied my 150+ GB of My Documents data onto an external hard drive and started the install...and I was amazed!!!

First the install actually read my internal RAID card without any of those annoying floppy drive inserts. Now, mind you, it took me about 3 days to get XP to read this same card - way to get caught up Microsoft!

The install itself is the easiest thing in the world - but also a bit disconcerting. After telling the install to use my existing C: drive, numerous things happen and Microsoft does a great job of keeping you in the loop. The system then reboots several times and you get to the final step where Windows 7 is configuring your system.

Now for those of us who have had Windows configure our systems in the past, this really means writing out the registry, asking you for your timezone and other nonsense. So when Windows 7 sat there for about 45 minutes without moving at all I thought "oh crap here we go again"

Good news - have patience! Windows 7 actually went out and configured all of my peripheral devices - my Blackberry, scanner and every other USB connected device. Further, Windows 7 actually figured out the correct drivers for my custom graphics and audio cards - not the "generic Driver" garbage from the past - but the actual drivers I was going to install myself after the setup was complete. Absolutely amazing!!!

This was easily the most pain free, easy, impressive Windows install I have ever done (and I have literally done them all). Now all it seems that I need to do is to install my programs, move my data back over and I am back in business!!!

Going to Windows 7

Intermixed with everything else that is starting to ramp up, I wanted to chronicle my move from XP to Windows 7.

First of all there is NO SUCH THING - you do not "upgrade" from XP - you have to completely reformat your hard drives and install Windows 7 from scratch.

So why the move? Well I have a very high end, custom system - 32 GB of RAM, 5 TB RAID 5 system with dual quad core processors. Well this high end system lasts about 48 hours on Windows XP 64-Bit and then I need to reboot it. If I do anything labor-intensive (you know as in why I got this level of machine to start with) then that 48 rapidly dwindles.

So I am going to suck it up and "upgrade". I have contacted all of the hardware folks and supposedly Windows 7 is unlike anything else on the market and I do not need a ton of additional drivers...we shall see.

Wish me luck...

What To Do When Your Investor Disappears

So my main investor is actually quite busy running much larger venture opportunities (i.e. $200M companies that have been around for years) and he completely disappears from time to time. Normally that is not a huge issue but now I need him to actually get some work done for our Big Presentation and he is nowhere to be found.

Sure we have succeeded in creating our proof-of-concept and sure we are focused on making the technical demo look good but without the deep market diligence previously offered by this investor, the Big Presentation will be a Big Dud

It is not like I can pressure him or force him to do anything - I cannot even get him to return a call or an email!

So what do you do when your main investor and primary market guy disappears?!?

I have no idea but I hope to figure something out soon...

Proof Update

So we are well on our way to building our proof-of-concept - you know the one that nobody thought we could build. It is interesting that we have met every milestone thus far, figured out any real obstacles and that all that is left is some grunt work...yet nobody seems to care.

This reminds me of my college days when my professor told me that a good theory is one that cannot be proven true or false. He said that you can write articles and run experiments all day long and nobody cares unless something definitive actually occurs. Great for research I guess but not for making money.

Stay tuned, in about 6 weeks we are going to shove our proof-of-concept up some very arrogant technical asses and then we will see how is the expert!