The picture in my blog banner is the family farm in Saskatchewan where I spent many summers running around keeping everyone else occupied. It’s where I learned to drive when I was 9 or so (just about took out a building – thanks Grandpa), and learned many a life lesson from my uncles, aunts, cousins and Grandma (“that fence could use some painting”).
Just to the right of where the blog picture ends is where my Uncle Lynn lives – he built his own house there, and I actually helped shingle his garage that summer some 30-odd years ago (coincidentally, he just had the shingles re-done).
Anyway, Uncle Lynn’s a bit of a computer geek – meaning to say he loves computers – even though he lives off of dial-up (the options are pretty limited in SE Saskatchewan, though I’ll bet he’ll break at some point and get a satellite system installed).
So of course the Windows 7 questions started coming, and last week I spent some time figuring out how and where to get the Family Pack (see my earlier post). Turns out he made a trip to the States, and picked up a copy in Minot, ND for something under $150 US.
Then he took it home, upgraded his Vista laptop, and then spent a few hours copying all his data off his XP workstation in anticipation of it’s ‘upgrade’.
It turns out his workstation has a data drive that the upgrade process walked him through copying all his files and settings to, performed the ‘7’ install, and copied the files and data back to the new install.
Without a hitch.
My Uncle was so pleased with himself, he picked up the phone to tell me all about it last night, and I was only too happy to listen. It’s really nice to get those relative-wants-to-talk-about-computers calls when it’s all about how they got it done without any outside assistance.
IMO, the XP to 7 upgrade process is probably the biggest hurdle Microsoft faces in getting people to ‘upgrade’, and this experience is proof-positive that they’ve done a good job of it.
Certainly better than I expected. Congrats Microsoft. Now Uncle Lynn needs to keep the phone line occupied for a few hours to download the updates 
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