Chapter 1: Finding and Installing the Hardware You Need AL In This Chapter ✓ Discovering what upgrades will improve your Windows 7 experience RI ✓ Making basic hardware upgrades ✓ Choosing a new monitor TE ✓ Troubleshooting new hardware installations MA L D et’s face facts: You don’t need all the fastest, most expensive gadgets to get value out of your computer. On the other hand, equipment that fits your needs can help you do more and better work in less time.
774 Knowing What Windows 7 Wants Knowing What Windows 7 Wants Do you have an old PC sitting in a corner, doing an uninspiring job of running Windows XP or (worse) Vista? Does your friendly local computer store advertise a pile of unsold computers, reduced in price because they’re past their prime? Not to worry, mate. That old hunk of iron may be usable yet. In the course of writing this book, I tried running Windows 7 on all sorts of odd pieces of hardware.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 775 Moral of the story: You don’t need to spend a fortune to improve your PC’s performance. As you work through the nitty-gritty details in this chapter, keep that simple fact in mind. Figure 1-1: The Windows Experience Index score for a superdiscounted $300 PC. Upgrading the Basic Stuff You probably have a printer, but it may not suit your needs — heck, photo-quality printers are so good and cheap nowadays that I’m frequently tempted to throw my old printer out the window.
776 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Dealing with drivers Most types of devices raise the question of compatibility: Will this gadget work with Windows 7? You can dissect that question a thousand different ways, but the real acid test is a simple one: Is a good driver available for the hardware? (A driver is a program that allows Windows 7 to interact with the hardware.) In most cases, the answer is yes, simply because Microsoft now hounds hardware manufacturers who have the temerity to distribute bad drivers.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 777 ✦ If you play games or work with fast-moving images, make sure that you can put up with a specific LCD’s response time before you buy it. LCDs are notorious for not keeping pace with some games, turning crisp images of, oh, smashing taxi cabs into mushy blobs of smashing taxi cabs. Come to think of it, maybe there isn’t all that much difference.
778 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Times have changed. It doesn’t make any sense for the video card to translate bits into an analog signal, only to have an LCD monitor translate the analog signal back into bits. That’s the crux of the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) plugs: Eliminate the video-card middleman. More and more LCD monitors come equipped with DVI plugs. More and more video cards come equipped with DVI ports (see Figure 1-2).
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 779 Smaller and older screens conform to the 4:3 aspect ratio: 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 resolutions are both 4:3 aspect ratios. (See the nearby sidebar, “Taking a look at aspect ratio,” for more on aspect ratios.) Typical standard format (non-wide-screen) 17-inch and 19-inch screens run at 1280 x 1024, which isn’t exactly 4:3 (it’s actually 5:4), but you don’t notice much distortion when viewing material meant to be seen at 4:3. For wide-screen measurements, see Table 1-1.
780 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Taking a look at aspect ratio If you’ve ever wondered why movies appear onscreen with a black band at the top and bottom, or why your photos get cut off a little differently on 8-by-10 prints as opposed to 6-by-9s, you’ve bumped into the effects of the aspect ratio. televisions and (almost) all computer screens used the 4:3 aspect ratio, where the ratio of a screen’s width to height is 4 to 3. In the following figure, you see a photo taken with a typical electronic camera.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 781 Although you probably won’t spend most of your time sweating over 25,000cell spreadsheets, this little comparison combined with a lot of experience leads me to a few simple generalizations: ✦ Any modern monitor you buy can handle 1280 x 1024 resolution just fine. If you’re staring at a screen that has 1280 x 1024 resolution, you can see most of a page in Word or Excel. For most Windows users, that’s good enough.
782 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Do you own a monitor but you don’t know its native resolution? As in so many other areas, Google is your friend. If you have a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW, for example, just run a Google search for SyncMaster 226BW native resolution. Bingo. I use a 27-inch Dell wide-screen monitor on my production machine. I love it. My eyes love it.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 783 3. If you have more than one monitor, you can also choose where to show the desktop (see Table 1-2 for details). 4. To change the resolution on either display, click either the 1 monitor or the 2 monitor, and then adjust the resolution using the slider shown in Figure 1-4. Figure 1-4: Adjusting the resolution on a correctly identified LCD monitor always results in fuzzy text.
784 Upgrading the Basic Stuff 6. Click the Keep Changes button to keep the new settings or click Revert to return to the old ones. If the display disappears or becomes unreadable, press Esc to return to the old settings. (Or, if you wait 15 seconds, Windows 7 returns to the old settings automatically.) If you can’t read the screen, you chose a resolution that your monitor can’t display. 7. When you’re done, click the OK button to close the Display Settings dialog box.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 785 ✦ Superfast and superexpensive video cards don’t do squat for most people. Unless you’re a fanatic gamer, look for video cards in the $100-and-under range. ✦ If your monitor has a Digital Visual Interface, get a video card with a DVI port. It’s worth paying extra. Trust me. (For more on DVI, check out the “Eliminating the video card middleman” section, earlier in this chapter.) ✦ Buy a card with a good fan. Video cards generate a lot of heat. Dissipate, dissipate, dissipate.
786 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Seriously, if you spend more than a few hours a day at the computer, you’re probably wondering why your fingers hurt and why you make so many mistakes typing. There’s a good reason: That keyboard you’re using probably cost a dollar. Maybe less. Getting a new one can make a big difference in how well you type and can speed your computing enormously. You know — so that you can get a life. . . .
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 787 Which keyboard do I use? An old Northgate OmniKey Ultra (see Figure 1-5), which is surely the Sherman tank of the keyboard biz. The beast weighs almost as much as a portable computer, and it costs just under $200. You can’t find new ones any more — you have to buy them refurbished. It’s ugly, it’s retro, and it’s decidedly unhip. But it keeps goin’ and goin’. It’s available from northgate-keyboard-repair.com, one of the few places that sell the classics.
788 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Figure 1-6: My personal favorite: the Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000. Photo courtesy Microsoft Corporation. Some folks prefer a trackball to a mouse. A trackball is a stationary device with a large ball resting in a cup on the top. You operate it by turning the ball with your palm or thumb. I hate ’em. Some folks like to use a graphics tablet rather than or in addition to a mouse.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 789 Key drives and ReadyBoost Although Windows has been prefetching data — going out to the hard drive and loading certain files that the system feels are likely to be needed — since the days of Windows XP, Vista brought a new capability to the table. Windows 7 SuperFetch, like the Vista version, keeps track of the data and programs you commonly use on your machine and tries to load that data before it’s used.
790 Upgrading the Basic Stuff Figure 1-7: The Belkin In-Desk USB Hub fits into the hole in your desk, leaving room for cables. Photo courtesy Belkin International. You can plug one USB hub into another — daisy-chain them — to attach more devices than a single hub can support. You can string USB cable forever and a day, but if you go much more than 16 feet (5 meters) with a single cable, you’re stretching things thin.
Upgrading the Basic Stuff 791 Here’s how hard it is to use a USB drive in Windows 7: 1. Plug the USB drive into a USB slot. If the USB drive you stick in a USB slot has an AutoRun autostarting program on it, you see an AutoPlay notification, like the one shown in Figure 1-8. Figure 1-8: Your AutoRun options. 2. Click one of the AutoPlay options. You’re done. Some parts of the AutoPlay notification (refer to Figure 1-8) can be controlled by settings in files sitting on the USB drive itself.
792 Installing New Hardware If you look closely at Figure 1-9, you see how Conficker can paste a folder icon in the Install or Run Program area. Conficker tries to trick you into running an infectious program by clicking the Open Folder to View Files link in the middle. I have details on how Conficker jimmies Windows into showing bogus AutoPlay entries in my Windows Secrets Newsletter article at tinyurl.com/dbgndc with further details at tinyurl.com/mck9ys.
Installing New Hardware 793 At one end of the scale, installing a new video card or hard drive can be rather difficult and is best done by an expert. At the other end, speakers don’t need any installation; you just plug them in and they work. The store can show you where the connectors go, but you have to plug them in yourself when you get home.
794 Installing New Hardware ✦ Write down everything you do in case you need to undo it or ask for help. This advice is particularly important if you’re opening your computer to install an internal device! ✦ If the device comes with a Windows 7 (or Vista) driver, check the manufacturer’s Web site to see whether you have the latest version. A company usually keeps drivers on one or more Web pages that you can find by clicking a Drivers, Downloads, or Support link.
Installing New Hardware 795 Figure 1-10: The Device Manager window. Figure 1-11: The driver date and version are easy to see. Book VIII Chapter 1 If you continue to have driver problems, go directly to the manufacturer’s Web site and follow its instructions to download and install the latest. Finding and Installing the Hardware You Need Note that Windows does not automatically check the manufacturer’s site for the latest drivers.
796 Installing New Hardware Knowing what to do if anything goes wrong If your driver installation goes belly-up, try these strategies in any order that makes sense to you: ✦ Review the instructions. Look for a section with a title such as “Troubleshooting” for suggestions on how to proceed. ✦ Call or e-mail the manufacturer’s technical support service for help. The manual or the Web site can tell you how. ✦ Call the store, or pack up everything and take it in.
Installing New Hardware 797 3. As soon as the computer starts to come back to life, press and hold down F8. Windows 7 displays a menu of special startup options you can choose. 4. Use the up-arrow and down-arrow keys to move the menu’s highlight to the option Last Known Good Configuration (Advanced), and then press Enter. 5. Finish the startup procedure as usual.
798 Installing New Hardware Using Device Stage If you’re extremely lucky and you’re installing a newer piece of hardware, you might have a gizmo that supports the Windows 7 standard known as Device Stage. If that’s the case, pat yourself on the back, rub your lucky rabbit’s foot (it won’t do the rabbit any good), and move to the head of the class. For more details about Device Stage, see Book VIII, Chapter 2.
