Windows 7 RC1 under test at Hillier Consultants

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 is now being run on one of our computers as a production machine.
Our set up is that all workstations connect to our domain server and all data is stored on that server so there is no locally stored data. Thus we can test Windows 7 in a real working environment without the risk of losing any data if things go seriously wrong.
The first viewing of Windows 7 beta left us unimpressed, however this release does seem a litle better.
It installed fine. Just a little annoyance when first installing there is a long delay without any progress bar while the disk is being formatted. Beyond that the install was trouble free. Most drivers were installed without the need for manufacturers disks but when we did the Vista drivers seemed to work OK.
We connected it to the domain without problem and at first glance it appeared to access the local network with better response times than Vista.
Internet access also seems to be improved.
The comparison with Vista is acute because we have set both machines to use a single keyboard, mouse and monitor via a KVM switch. Transferring from Vista to Win7 goes a dream, however there is a delay before mouse and keyboard respond when going from Win7 to Vista.
We are not installing MS Office on this machine yet but we have installed Open Office, Firefox & Thunderbird, Opera, Safari and FileZilla all of which loaded fine and seem to work without issues.
We installed Free AVG antivirus (Vista version) pro temp and this seems to be fine.
We are only at the end of our first 24 hours of testing so it is early days.
We will keep you posted of significant issues as we find them.

Accounts systems

Are you an accounts user? Are you locked into Sage? Are you paying high levels of support? Are you looking for accounts packages on non-windows platforms?
We have recently been investigating alternatives to the Sage Accounts programs. Not the we have anything against Sage as such. As a business system it does the business. The support desk in UK based and they have a lot going for them.
But what alternatives are there? Well, there is TAS books but that is now part of the Sage empire and we suspect product convergence over time. There is quick books but we know of no business using that system.
We have however recently investigated two particular alternatives.
The first, Accountz, is based on an installed program which runs on Windows, Linux and Mac systems. We have tested this out in the single user version. We tried to test to destruction. We created the data on an Ubuntu Linux system. We then copied the files across the network onto a Windows 2003 server mapped drive. We then installed to product onto a Vista computer and were able to access the data on either the Vista or Ubuntu system. It worked! This makes it very interesting from a Linux point of view - a topic we will return to in another blog.
The second, Kashflow, is a web based accounts system. There are no programs to use, simply use your favourite web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera) and you are away. The data is stored on the companies London based web server and mirrored to a backup server. Because of this the program is available on both Windows and Linux platforms, which makes it equally interesting to us as Linux users.
Both systems have a respectable UK installed user base.
For further details of this visit our website www.hillierconsultants.com or phone (UK only) 01268 548636 or email sales at our office.