Reading Time: 8 minutes

By Ash Nallawalla

Microsoft Windows 7 (Win7) is the latest operating system (OS) to come out of the Redmond giant software maker. It follows the less than spectacular Windows Vista, which I installed on my family computers but not on my main PC. This release is different and truly worth the wait. The executive summary is that I use it daily on my personal PC.

Some cynics have said that Win7 is what Vista was meant to be, implying that Vista was released before it was ready. There might be an element of truth in that, but without the worldwide feedback from Vista users, Win7 might not have been much better. Microsoft has listened. I was the first to report one problem and it does not exist in the released version – that pleased me a lot.

I won’t list all the features of Win7 because you can look them up at www.windows7.com. This hands-on report is about what I liked and didn’t like.

Installation

It took nearly 84 minutes to install Win7 on a new 1 TB drive. It took an hour to reach the end of the “Expanding Windows files” phase. At the 80 minute mark I entered my key. Four minutes later, the installation was complete, but it then proceeded to fetch updates. Some Linux lovers have published extraordinarily long times for an in-place Vista-to-Win7 upgrade (e.g. 20 hours) – all I can say is that the method I mention later in this review will save you a lot of time, regardless of what OS you currently use. You will need an external drive.

Out of Box Experience (OOBE)

During the beta test period I noted after installation that I had to dig up the original programs for the motherboard to enable the LAN, audio and optimum video. There was a further hurdle because the Asus drivers came with a hard-coded .INI file containing a string depicting the OS, e.g. “WNT_6.1P_32_MCE = Win7”.

Such a string was not present, so the program would refuse to run. This was annoying (but understandable why it is needed) because I could not connect to the Internet to look for new drivers or to activate the OS without an Internet connection.

Therefore, I had to copy those programs to the Win7 drive, edit the .INI file to add an entry for Win7 by copying one from Vista, then the necessary drivers were installed. I am pleased to report that the final version of Win7 seemed to know my motherboard and its components, and only had a minor problem with the speakers not being seen. My Skype phone was, however, seen as the only audio device. I downloaded the latest version of the Realtek audio drivers and the Win7 version of the Nvidia video drivers (for good measure) and the PC was happy.

Windows Easy Transfer

One of the headaches of a major OS upgrade is how to migrate all the old programs and data to the PC. In my case I was upgrading from Windows XP Pro, not Windows Vista (which will allow an in-place upgrade), so I had to install Windows 7 on a clean drive and reinstall all the applications. Even if you are upgrading from Vista, I recommend a clean install because you are guaranteed that there are no orphan files wasting space.

My data is always kept on two separate physical, internal drives, so that a scrambled C drive won’t lock out access to the data. I keep just the OS and installed programs on the C drive. This makes it easier to reformat the C drive to install a new operating system, but some settings are kept on that drive by some programs, such as browser Favourites/Bookmarks. You have to remember to back them up.

Transferring programs and settings from Windows XP.

I downloaded a free utility program from Microsoft known as Windows Easy Transfer (WET) and connected an external backup drive. This is handy because few people would buy a new PC just to upgrade the OS. WET lets you choose the programs and settings that you wish to move to the Windows 7 drive. This program finds files all over your computer, so I had to use the Advanced settings to deselect files from the migration list, as they lived on drives other than C, so they would still be available after I swapped the C drive.

The main joy of this OOBE was that all settings, cookies, stored passwords were migrated. For more information about a Windows XP to Windows 7 migration, see technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ee150430.aspx.

Desktop

The Windows desktop is less cluttered than before, showing only the Recycle Bin at top left and, of course, any shortcut icons or files you choose to place there. As in Vista, the icons are larger than they were in XP Pro, which helps those using a touch-screen PC. At the bottom, the Quick Launch area has gone (you can get it back with a hack) and the Taskbar shows you thumbnails of multiple windows you have opened. If you hover on a thumbnail, you can preview it full-screen. You can pin your favourite programs to the Taskbar for rapid access.

Backup

The supplied Backup tool is basic but better than the XP version, as you can set a schedule for automatic backups. I use it to back up important files and a system image. It does an incremental backup only and I have chosen the Non-Stop method to silently back up to a separate internal drive. For a complete image backup I use Acronis TrueImage Home 2010.

You also get the opportunity to create a System Repair Disc in case the system image in the backup set is damaged.

Applications

So far I have installed the following applications without any issues:

Acronis TrueImage Home 2010
Adobe CS3
Axandra IBP 11.7
Microsoft Office 2007
Norton Internet Security 2010
Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger
Winzip 12.0
Zune 4.0

XP Mode

I had no choice but to set a password for Windows XP Mode, the virtual environment for running old programs that won’t run under Win7. I wasn’t able to run the beta or RC version of XP Mode for some reason, but the RTM version (the one you can buy) works fine.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that this is a copy of Windows XP inside Win7, so it too has to download updates. You have to find a separate Anti Virus program for it. So far I haven’t found any of my regular programs that needs XP Mode, but it’s there if needed. The Security Center interface did not point me to Microsoft Security Essentials, its latest, free antivirus offering. No problem – I grabbed it from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ .

Security

The Action Center replaces Security Center, which is now part of the former. Its presence is a small pennant icon in the System Tray at the bottom right of the screen. You can open it to see your security and computer maintenance task status, as well as adjust the UAC settings.

The UAC (user account control) feature was one of the most annoying in Vista. Win7 gives you a four-step setting, with the top one being the Vista setting. Win7 defaults to the second highest level (notify me when programs are trying to change the OS settings but not when I make changes; and dim the desktop). The next setting is identical but the desktop is not dimmed, thus you are more likely to click OK without thinking. The lowest setting is Never Notify, which is not a good idea.

Win7 has a feature known as ASLR (address space layout randomisation), which means that working data in memory is placed in random locations, so that malware doesn’t know where to find it and tamper with it. ASLR has to be enabled by the software developer, so don’t expect old programs to have this benefit.

It also features DEP (data execution prevention), which came in a basic form in Windows XP SP2 but was improved in Windows Vista. This prevents buffer overflow exploits by not allowing memory that is reserved for data to be used to execute code.

BitLocker To Go (in Win7 Ultimate) now enables you to encrypt USB flash drives. In Vista SP1 you could only encrypt hard disks, which are less likely to be lost or stolen than flash drives.

Corporate users can take advantage of DirectAccess, which does away with the need to open a VPN (virtual private network) tunnel.

Also for the corporate users in a Windows Server 2008 R2 environment, AppLocker provides finer access control over designated applications. Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise PCs can be managed fully with AppLocker.

Biometric fingerprint reading is now part of the OS, unlike Vista, where a third-party application was needed to enable it.

Internet Explorer (IE) 8 has several security improvements, but the one I like the most is Domain Name Highlighting, which helps avoid clicking phishing emails. A common trick is to have a long URL such as www.anz.com.some. gibberish.malware.cn. The email program might display a truncated URL showing the beginning of the URL and you might be tricked into trusting the website. IE8 in this example would highlight the real domain at the end of the URL.

There are many other security features that can’t be listed for reasons of space. We used to say that Windows XP Pro was the most secure OS from Microsoft, but now Win7 takes it to a new level.

Reliability

The OS is loaded with peace-of-mind features such as the Action Center, which alerts you if there is a security or maintenance problem. Some tools are new, while others are more accessible now. The Reliability Monitor keeps a log of application failures, warnings and informational events such as installations and updates. Should there be a problem during startup of the PC, the Startup Repair Tool launches automatically.

Devices

Windows 7 works with many devices in many clever ways. One that I can relate to is Location Aware Printing. When I travelled a lot to my US company headquarters, there was always a problem remembering to change the default printer, otherwise my document would be printed 8,000 miles away. A more common situation is bringing the work laptop home and needing to connect with the home network. You don’t need to do anything – Windows 7 just finds the network.

Problems

I noted a few permission problems when working on files created on the Windows XP Pro system. Their owner (in Properties > Security) was shown as some long alphanumeric string (a Registry key). I had to make my new identity the owner of such files by giving them full control. I should say that this might not have been a problem if I had allowed WET to copy all my data files, but then the whole process could have taken many hours. Instead, I am using a registry hack that lets me give full control with a single click.

Task Manager is occasionally not as responsive as it used to be in XP. It takes its sweet time to show up. I have an occasional bout of complete unusability owing to slowness. This is somehow tied with Firefox 3.5 (and 3.0) and it comes and goes. At first a very high I/O Read count for csrss.exe was fixed by turning off the Superfetch service (thus negating one of the “benefits”). However, when the PC is unusably slow, Task Manager isn’t showing high CPU, high memory use, or high anything, which makes the problem hard to diagnose. My graphics card isn’t particularly fast, so that is a possible suspect.

Advice from others to turn off indexing wasn’t a solution. I also checked whether my SATA drives were set to IDE or AHCI – they were set to IDE, which is meant to help with speed. I improved disk performance by moving the contents of the C drive from a 1 TB disk to a 320 GB disk. Both are 7200 RPM, so it seems that having an unnecessarily large C drive isn’t a good idea. The Windows Experience Index (WEI) improved from 3.4 to 5.9 for the primary hard disk. My graphics card has a WEI of 4.8, it is the weakest link and, therefore, my overall WEI is also 4.8. Since office tasks only need a minimum WEI of 2.0 and gaming needs a score of 3.0, I don’t feel deprived by not having a higher score.

Fix: I cured the responsiveness problem by removing a couple of obscure Firefox add-ons that I wasn’t using, but they were always loaded.

At the time of writing, Windows Live Sync (a free, online service from Microsoft that lets you sync files between two or more PCs) could not recognise Windows 7 PCs whose names were previously associated with the libraries set up on Live Sync. This wastes time, as you have to set them up as new machines on the sync list.

Resources

Is professional SEO certification a state of mind?

2 January 2010

Ash Nallawalla

SEO No Comments

Reading Time: 7 minutes

I liken SEO to the early days of medicine.

In every forum where SEOs congregate, sooner or later someone brings up one of two topics:

Is it worth my while to get SEO certification from XYZ academy?
My SEO client was ripped off by some amateur posing as an SEO.

The discussions usually mention:

Examples of shoddy or outdated SEO practices such as keyword-stuffing, over-optimised content, needless site redesign, mass directory submissions, etc. The insinuation here is: “I am a better SEO because I can point out shoddy SEO work.”
Who is competent to certify someone as a professional SEO? The insinuation here is: “I am a competent SEO but I doubt that anyone offering certification is better than me (or equal to me).”
A comptent SEO should be able to provide evidence of successful rankings. The insinuation here is: “I can show some page-one results for my SEO work, therefore all competent SEOs should be able to do likewise.”

I own a very part-time business where I teach SEO and I certify some of the students as Professional SEOs. I have trained dozens of students but only two were awarded a certification. (This isn’t a pitch for that business, so there is no link to that website.)

Therefore, these discussions used to intrigue me, particularly because there is very little interest in taking up SEO training.

SEO = Witch Doctor or Quack?

I began this post by likening the SEO industry to the early days of medicine. Nobody knew how the human body works, but they knew that certain actions (eating, sleeping, exercise etc) were good and others (starving, poking big holes in the torso, etc) were bad.

Then came the medicine men who found ways to cure illness. They found that eating or applying certain herbs was beneficial. It took many centuries before someone decided that this stuff needs to be written down and taught in a college to ensure repeatability and reduce the loss of innocent lives. Even today, humans haven’t fully guessed the body’s algorithms.

Are today’s SEOs comparable to witch doctors? Some can cure a ranking malady and others cannot. In these politically correct times, let’s not offend witch doctors but let’s compare SEOs with quacks. I am reminded of an old joke, modified for the SEO profession:

Q. What’s the difference between a used car salesman and an SEO?

A. The used car salesman knows when he is lying.

On SEO Certification

I’ll explain why my SEO training business is very part-time. Three years ago I left an employer after making them the then-largest SEO company in the country. (I headed that division). I can’t take credit for the large number of SEO customers – having a great sales force and a large customer base (for other products) had a lot to do with it. However, over 90% of the customers enjoyed a top-10 ranking and 94% had a top-20 ranking.

Buoyed with my own ranking success, I started an SEO training business offering a one-day SEO course and a half-day PPC course. Back then Kalena Jordan ran the only business offering SEO training, but it was online. I felt that a classroom approach also had a place in the market. Later, other companies joined the training bandwagon.

I wrote down all my acquired knowledge, partly to give myself a handy checklist for topics that I didn’t encounter very often. I regarded my course content as a short cut to learning current best practices without wasting time on outdated or ill-informed material that you will find on the web.

I invested in local print ads and AdWords. I booked a venue. There were a few nibbles but a lot of excuses – the date was not convenient. The price was too much. It sounds very technical. And so on. The course was cancelled. The remaining students were trained at their own premises.

In 2007, I went to India for a holiday and almost at the last minute a friend offered to organise a training opportunity in Pune. It was oversubscribed – a great success. Later, the training course was expanded to three days, then cut back to two days because students could not get time off.

Unfortunately, after deducting the cost of an air fare to India and charging an affordable number of Rupees, there isn’t a lot of profit left to make it an ongoing business proposition by my standards. That country is still clamouring for competent SEO training, which is a good sign, given that we in the West like to point out shoddy SEO work from some Indian SEOs. I still get 2-4 training enquiries every day from India without any advertising. I point them to my self-paced online course but very few take it up.

So, for the time being I am happy to be back in corporate, in-house SEO land. When I get an enquiry from Australia, I offer to run the course on a weekend at their premises. That’s where the interest disappears. There’s also a price war of late. I used to charge $1795 for two days but I see others offering a two-day course for less than $600. Good luck to them.

Giving a Bad Name

Not surprisingly, some trainers have given SEO training a bad name. What do you make of this post – SEO Certification Guide?

Why Get Trained?

A friend who runs an SEO agency asked me an interesting question, “Why are you selling SEO training?” I asked him why this puzzled him. He could not understand why I would want to share my secrets. Perhaps he didn’t want the market to be flooded with competent SEOs – he didn’t say.

I told him that I was tired of retail SEO, having worked on nearly 2000 websites at that stage. It was a sausage factory, with sales pressures, etc. I liked the thought of being my own boss, travelling as I pleased, attending more than one SEO conference in a year, and so on. I said that there was an obvious shortage of experienced SEOs (I trained all but one of my SEO staff on the job).

A State of Mind

The lack of interest in paying for SEO training suggests to me that a lot of operators think that they know all that they need to know and don’t need to pay for any formal certification. This is a simple economic decision. After all, most of us are self-taught in Microsoft Office and unless an employer is paying for it, we don’t do a course in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Similarly, short-sighted SEO company owners are happy for their new hires to be trained on the job. I get that.

However, I don’t understand why some people are so vocal against SEO certification. Don’t we need operators to have a minimum level of competence? Is SEO destined to be a black art, only to be learnt at the expense of clients?

There is also a lot of ego at risk. I am not certified, so why would I presume to certify others? I have demonstrated expertise, so I don’t need to prove it any further and get certified myself. Similarly, the A-list SEOs are not about to apply for SEO certification anytime soon.

The State of the SEO Profession

The SEO profession consists of in-house SEOs like me and consultants/agencies who work for clients.

A lot of the in-house SEOs I have met or observed appear to be new to the profession, which is not surprising, as very few business owners hadn’t heard of SEO five years ago. That they are hiring full-time SEOs is a great sign. This group includes expert SEOs who work on their own websites, i.e. they don’t work for others.

The second group is more visible. They include A-list SEOs who speak at every major conference and who try to engage Matt Cutts on Twitter. :razz: Their public visibility is usually aimed at picking up new clients and good luck to them. Most of them have excellent blogs or informative websites where they attract more subscribers and potential clients. Their SEO knowledge is undeniably excellent. They are expensive to hire.

However, the large B-list of this grouping is unknown. They include the fresh IT graduates who advertise themselves as an “SEO Expert” and use a Gmail email account. Then there are the agency owners who haven’t practised SEO personally for years but who hire fresh IT graduates and pay them peanuts. Most of the shoddy work I have seen comes from this part of the industry. They don’t invest in their staff and make them follow a checklist of tasks including mass submission to low-quality directories. By the way, shoddy SEO work can be found in all parts of the world. Don’t always blame the operator – blame their boss.

Demand for SEO work is still on the increase; therefore, the number of agencies has increased. It’s a scary thought to think that large numbers of fresh practitioners are learning on the job. I don’t think other trainers are getting much business.

The B-list also includes an unknown number of competent, unsung operators who rarely identify themselves in their forum posts, if any. Don’t for a second assume that all SEO gurus are well-known.

SEO Competence

I believe that most people who perform SEO work can deliver ranking success for a non-competitive keyphrase, particularly one that mentions a suburb, e.g. Avondale Heights b&b. In many suburbs there won’t be more than 10 B&Bs with a website. At best there will be directory entries in the top positions but they can be beaten with an optimised, dedicated website.

However, once you need national or international ranking or have multi-national websites, the number of competent SEOs drops sharply.

To conclude, here is what I would look for in a competent SEO:

On-the-Job Experience. Both depth and width of experience are necessary, which is easier for the agency SEO than an in-house SEO. The agency SEO sees large and small websites in various industries, each with its own peculiarities. However, they only learn where the assignments are customised, that is, they don’t use the same checklist for every customer. Getting a new website to rank #1 nationally for “home loans” is not possible for a $5,000 or even $10,000 price tag.
Personal Experience. Even an agency SEO cannot get a breadth of experience unless he or she owns their own websites. Not one but many personal websites. Some can be affiliate sites, some can be information sites and at least one blog. What you can experiment with on your own sites must not be done on a customer site.
Currency of Knowledge. If you still believe that an H1 tag or the Meta Description are important for ranking, then your knowledge isn’t current*. If you don’t want formal training, you need to follow the right people on Twitter and participate in the right forum and read the right blog. There are some other good sources but there are also a lot more places where you could waste your time listening to the voice of ignorance.
Marketing or Business Experience. A recent IT graduate might know how to perform on-page SEO but you need someone who is first a marketer and then an SEO. This industry is known as Search Marketing and not Search IT for a good reason. It’s about selling or engagement with the customer, which requires knowledge they teach in business school. A Marketer-SEO can always hire an IT expert to solve technical issues.

* The H1 is important but not if that’s the only change you are making to the site. Google can recognise a heading even if it is not marked up as such. The contents of the heading are very important. The Meta Description needs to contain some compelling words to encourage a click. Using it just to repeat the Title Tag might not attract a click. Therefore it has importance, but not in the sense that keywords-in-meta-description help the ranking. The clicks help ranking, if you see the difference.

So, what are your views on SEO competency training and certification??

Review: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate #win7