If you are still using Windows 7 you’re missing out on some great user experiences on Windows 10. We upgraded one of our office-workshop PC’s to Windows 10 and did not have any compatibility issues with the wide range of software we use, including a lot of out-of-hours music related programs. But overall one of my favourite things about Windows 10 is it is fast and smooth. If you upgrade your old mechanical drive to a solid state drive the performance, startup and shutdown times of your desktop or laptop will amaze you. You might not do much on your computer beyond pictures, picture editing, surfing the interwebs, and email, but it is a joy to use a fast computer and see programs open up as soon as you click them.

If you’re one of those people who have stuck with what you know best – windows 7 – it’s time to get with the program – windows 10.

For a while we are going to spend time with every new customer to demonstrate how to use windows 10. It’s my experience that people are more affected by change and navigation in new systems, once we show how easy it is to navigate the apprehensions seem to vanish.

Get windows upgraded by an I.T. pro ensures your settings are optimized, the system is installed correctly, and we may also be able to include windows 10 at no cost to you. Please bring your computer in or call for service onsite.

If you need to reinstall Windows 10 at any point you may be a little confused by the activation and licensing approach for Windows 10. It is not being displayed in the product key code box in system tools and if you upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 you could use this previous key to get to activation for the current version, assuming you still have the old licence key.

Another method is to download the industry standard analysis tool Belarc and take a snapshot of all your system data such as programs installed and their respective licences, plus details about your computer specs, motherboard, hard drive and ram memory installed.

If it’s good enough for NASA it’s perfect for the rest of us.

I’ve been around since the early days of computing. Remember the early IBM 386 machines we started with DOS codes? Or the small square Mac computers with a whopping 4MB of storage space? And those hard drives from Hitachi that cost $3500 for 10MB space? I bought a printer for $4500 that now costs no more than a few hundred dollars.

I started off in network engineering. Then on to Microsoft University leading to my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) badges. I’ve worked on corporate servers and small business SBS networks in the 1998 – 2000 – 2003 operating systems. Good IT support begins and ends with education and ongoing training, nothing’s changed, I still spend the equivalent of 2 days a week on MS online training and refreshers. When I started wiredoffice in 2005 I became a break/fix adhoc service mostly for small business, prosumers, home office and consumers. Many of my early customers are still around and regular users of the service.

I am not always a fan of Microsoft and I’ve had plenty of criticism over the years and shared the same exasperation and frustration as you, like the missing start menu in Windows 8 as an example. I heard complaints about every new Windows OS. They all hated the change from Windows 95 to 98,  windows 2000 to XP, XP to windows 7,  and so on. Funny enough, every new iteration of Windows turned from hatred en masse to a legion of die hard fans. The so hated XP is now spoken about like a legend from the days of yore. Windows 10 has had a few glitches, but mostly the criticism has been about that dreaded word – change. In my opinion Windows 10 is practically flawless, fast, and stable. I have empathy for those struggling with it, but usually find 10 minutes education smooths things out. It’s amazing the difference it makes to know the two commands, start + i, and start + X, can make to ease the I can’t find the settings complaint. (start is the little Microsoft logo on the keyboard in between ctrl and alt keys).

To celebrate this milestone, for September 2017,  I am offering a 20% discount – 1% for every year I’ve worked in this business. This applies to call outs and workshop work. Remember that remote login has a base charge of $49 for 30mins. To best utilize online support call or email the issue so when we log in we will most likely have the fix at hand. Our support standard has always been same day or overnight service. Our business model is such that we have never had a computer in-workshop for longer than 24 hours.  Service is available 7 days most days of the year. We fix everything!

Cheers – Dave Burchall