Yesterday I received my Windows 7 Launch Home Party package. I posted the photos of the package on our House Party home page.

Yes, the Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition was in the party package.

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ180E Laptop. Sony's eSupport site indicates:

Information about upgrade and support for Windows® 7 for the VGNFZ180E VAIO® model will be available when Windows® 7 is officially released by Microsoft. Please check back then for further information.

Hey, I will be hosting a Windows 7 Launch Party on the day Windows 7 is officially released. I need to be able install it way before then.

I am posting this using my Sony Vaio Laptop that is running the Windows 7 Ultimate I received in my House Party package. Here is how I upgraded my Sony laptop to Windows 7:

I really did not want to take the chance of losing my Vista setup and decided to first clone my hard drive and install the Windows 7 upgrade on the new hard drive. I have been thinking about upgrading my laptop's hard drive anyway. Sony laptop owners take note though: You may void your warranty if you replace your laptop's hard drive. Read your warranty first. If you follow the steps I followed, you will preserve your current hard drive in its current condition and you can swap it back in if something goes wrong.

I had already purchased a Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ-G2 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive and a APRICORN EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL 2.5" USB 2.0 Hard Drive Upgrade Kit from my favorite online shopping site:

Everything you want for your computer and more at Newegg.com.

Here are the simple steps I followed:

1. Deactivate any DRM software like iTunes.
2. Turn off the computer.
3. Take the old hard drive out.
4. Put the new hard drive in the laptop.
5. Put the old hard drive in the Apricorn's external enclosure and connect enclosure to the computer's USB port.
6. Turn the computer on, put Apricorn EZ Gig II CD in the DVD Drive and boot from CD.
7. Select the Clone Hard Drive option and follow the prompts. Make sure to check Typical Upgrade and clone your hard drive as is even if your new hard drive is larger than the old one. You can resize the partitions later. Be carefull in checking source and destination drives. Remember: Your source drive is your old drive that is connected to the USB.
8. The process, in my case, took about three hours. At the end I disconnected the Apricorn external drive and took the EZ Gig CD out and rebooted to my new hard drive.
9. Final step is to put the Windows 7 DVD and start the upgrade process.

I am happy to report that the Windows 7 upgrade process is painless. My computer did not freeze in the process and it did not take long.

All my programs, including Lotus SmartSuite which supposedly had compatibility issues in Vista, are working without any problems so far. All my settings, documents, pictures and favorites are intact. Wireless connection did not require any adjustments.

I have a better laptop with a larger and faster hard drive and a much better operating system.

Apricorn EZ Upgrade Notebook Universal Hard Drive Kit US $37.99

LAPTOP HARD DRIVE SATA 25 500 GB NOTEBOOK Drives New US $87.74

BRAND NEW LAPTOP NOTEBOOK 750GB HARD DRIVE w Windows 7 US $149.95

NEW 25 Internal SATA 640GB Notebook Laptop Hard Drive US $84.99

NEW LAPTOP NOTEBOOK 500GB SATA HARD DRIVE w Windows 7 US $89.95

WD 500GB NOTEBOOK LAPTOP HARD DRIVE SATA 3Yrs Wrty NEW US $61.49

WD 500GB NOTEBOOK LAPTOP HARD DISK DRIVE SATA 25 NEW US $61.49

500GB LAPTOP NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE SATA 25 Hitachi NEW US $60.90

Hitachi 500GB SATA LAPTOP NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE NEW 3yrWr US $60.90

500GB Hitachi SATA LAPTOP NOTEBOOK HARD DRIVE New SALE US $60.90

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phpBay Pro is a great Ebay Affiliate plugin for WordPress for generating affiliate income using eBay partner Network. With phpBay Pro, you can quickly and easily add rich keyword based content to your WordPress blog to complement your existing content.

phpBay Pro plugin for WordPress is a powerful tool you can use to integrate eBay auctions into your website / blog. When a user clicks on a product and places a winning bid, you receive a commission from ebay.

If you have been thinking about finding additional ways of monetizing your blog; phpBay Pro is the way to go. You do not even need to build full-blown auction sites. Just add 5-10 auction items that are related to what you are writing about on some of your posts by using phpBayPro. Your readers will appreciate the immediate availability of products you are writing about and you will make money when they purchase these products.

Here is another tool I use and recommend:

Constant Contact for email marketing, newsletters and online surveys. It does not cost a bundle, it is easy to use and you can get started immediately. It is do-it-yourself email marketing at its best. I have been using constant contact for years now and I am impressed by their service. They have a variety of templates that are easy to use and customize. They also make it a snap to create subscription forms that you can integrate into your web site.

Constant Contact's leading email marketing and online survey tools supported by its expert personal coaching and support help all types of small businesses and organizations create professional-looking email newsletters and insightful online surveys and begin a dialogue with their customers.

The service is great to build and maintain an opt-in list for permission based email marketing. You can send eye-catching HTML email newsletters, email postcards, coupons to your clients, customers or web site visitors. There is a wealth of information available on their site.

You can try Constant Contact free.

Do-It-Yourself Email Marketing

 

When I wanted to have basic AJAX functionality, I searched, downloaded, tested a variety of AJAX frameworks. In the end I started using JQuery to add AJAX and other nifty interactions to the web sites I build.

jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

JQuery.com

Above pretty much sums up what JQuery is and what it will do for you. It is easy to understand and use but if you are in a hurry and need to get certain type of interactions available on your web site, you can find a solution by browsing through the library of plugins that are readily available. In no time you would have Ajax functionality available on your web site.

Here are some of my favorite JQuery Plugins:

Tablesorter 2.0
Sean O's MP3 Player
UI Tabs

If you wanted to dig deeper and learn more about JQuery, there is a wealth of information available online including tutorials. You may also want to get the following books:

Learning jQuery

Jonathan Chaffer. Packt Publishing 2007, Paperback, 380 pages, $33.85

jQuery in Action

John Resig (Foreword). Manning Publications 2008, Paperback, 376 pages, $24.84

 

Once you have good solid text editor like UltraEdit, you want to have another tool to compare and merge files.

SourceGear DiffMerge is the tool I use to visually compare and merge files. It is easy to use and saves a lot of time for me when applying changes to the different versions of source code. And it is free for a single user  pretty much any number of users -- as Paul Roub corrected below. I recommend you give it a try.

I want to share with everyone the tools I use and recommend on the Tools Categories of this blog.

Number one tool everyone needs to have is a good solid text editor. Notepad is useless. There are probably zillions of text editors out there. My choice has been UltraEdit for a long time. It is just one of these utilities I couldn't do without. I find it a lot more intuitive to use compared to other text editors available.

UltraEdit is the ideal text, hex, HTML, PHP, Java, Javascript, Perl, and programmer's editor.  I probably am not taking advantage of all of its capabilities but for what I use and what I need it is an absolutely indispensible tool for me. I love that I can open huge text or csv files, do quick searches, use it as a HEX editor, put windows side by side and all kinds of neat stuff. Its search and replace functions are great.

UltraEdit is my text editor and I recommend it to anyone.

Click here to try UltraEdit.

 

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