Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Schrock Innovations is holding a Windows 7 launch party this Saturday, October 17 in our Lincoln Service Center form 10-noon.

Stop by the Service Center to enjoy a dessert bar (dessert in the morning – AWESOME!), take a peek at our 2009 Holiday Special PC, and test drive Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 7, almost a week before your friends can.

I know there the Texas Tech game is that Saturday, so if you need a few extra reasons to make the trip Saturday morning here they are:

FREE DOOR PRIZES

Just stop by the launch party and sign in to win. We will be giving away more than $700 in prizes to people just for attending the party. You could win:

1. An MSI Netbook Computer ($400 retail value)
2. 320 GB External Backup Hard Drive ($120 retail value)
3. One of 2 $50 Schrock Innovations Gift Cards
4. A FREE Copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (available after October 22nd)
5. A 2 GB USB Flash Drive

TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATIONS

We will be showing off some of the fancy new technology behind this year’s Holiday Special PC that you will only find at Schrock Innovations.

• Take a peek at the latest hard drive technology, solid state. These hard drives have no moving parts, making them the most reliable storage device you can get in a computer today.
• Watch us beam video wirelessly to a TV on the other side of the Service Center using Windows 7’s new media sharing functions
• Watch one of our technicians produce a movie and beam it to a television without any DVDs at all in less than a minute!

I hope to see you there!

Excitement is building for the launch of our 2009 Holiday Special computer featuring Windows 7 and a solid state hard drive.

With the launch party coming up on Saturday the 17th in our Lincoln Service Center, our commercials promoting the new system started running this week on TV and radio.

The official specifications will be released soon on the Schrock Innovations website, but until then watch this commercial to get a sneak peek at the most advanced computer available in Nebraska this Holiday Season!

With excitement building for the upcoming release of Microsoft’s latest operating System, Windows 7, a couple of familiar guests might be missing from the launch parties.

Microsoft has removed Outlook Express (Windows Mail in Vista) and Windows Movie Maker from Windows 7 deciding instead to promote their Windows Live products.

Windows Live Mail

The basic concept behind Windows Live Mail is that you can run it from your mobile device, your computer in offline mode, or live on the internet.

Rather than clicking on the “Send/Receive” button you instead click a “Sync” button. The idea here is that you can use your phone or computer in offline mode, and as soon as they go online they will “sync” with the online system to keep everything in one place that is shared with all of your devices.

Here’s a video that shows you how the process works from start to finish:

Windows Live Moviemaker

Windows Movie Maker has been included free of charge with Windows since Windows XP was released.

On the Windows Live blog, the lead designer on the Movie Maker project explained that the company’s research showed that most PC users employed Movie Maker to create small videos, video slide shows, or combinations of both with some titles and transitions.

Knowing that users were not using Movie Maker to create feature length films, Microsoft focused on making an application that can do what its user want quickly and easily.

For example, the “Auto Movie” feature allows you to select a group of pictures and an audio sound track and then let the computer do the hard work of organizing the images so they start and stop with the sound track.

Here’s a video that explains the most hyped features of Movie Maker:

Why Do I Have to Download It?

Windows 7 will not come with Movie Maker of Windows Live Mail (or even Windows Messenger) installed by default. Users have to make the decision to download the components from the Windows Live website or through the Microsoft Update (Windows Update) feature.

This solves a lot of anti-competitive issues not only in the US, but in Europe as well, while still allowing Microsoft to give its own products a slight advantage over their competitors in the marketplace.

We have been hard at work for the past few weeks designing the Schrock Innovations 2009 Holiday System, and the first prototype testing is underway.

This year’s Holiday Special will feature 2 new technologies that have never before been used in a Schrock build. The result is a new Modular PC that is faster (not seconds faster but STUNNINGLY faster) more reliable, and better prep[ared for tomorrow’s technology than ever before.

What is the Holiday Special?

Schrock’s Holiday Specials are always highly anticipated because the systems push the limits of technology at an unbelievable price. We offer a complete system (including monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and speakers) for only $1,499.

These systems are configured with amazing specifications. This is not the typical Dell up-sell routine, where you are lured in for $499 and end up spending way more than you planned.

These computers are configured to rock your PC experience with no modification required.

This year’s Holiday Special Modular PC is no exception. We are keeping the exact details close to the vest at the moment, but I can tell you it will be running Windows 7.

Faster than Anyone Expects

ONe of the big reasons we are so excited for the 2009 Holiday Special is because one of the new pieces of technology we are introducing will bring MASSIVE speed increases to the table that will be unavailable anywhere else in Nebraska (even by special order form Dell).

This new technology will unleash AMAZING speed that most computer users have only imagined. In our tests this technology has cut processes that used to take HOURS down to mere minutes.

We get excited whenever a system we produce can dramatically improve a PC users’ experience. To put it bluntly we have not a game-changing PC since we introduced Lincoln to Windows XP and LCD displays ion 2001. This system will be just as revolutionary.

Reliable Beyond Anything You Have Imagined

The 2009 Holiday Special is going to be faster than anything we have ever built before at Schrock, but it is also the most reliable system we have ever built.

This system runs COOLER (temperature wise) than any previous computer we have built, even though it sports a quad core processor. Because it runs cooler, it also uses LESS POWER than other quad core systems we have released in 2009.

Another new pieces of technology cuts the odds of a PC breakdown by an amazing 75%. This PC has more up-time, less lag time, ind its overall cost of ownership is dramatically lower over its expected 8-year lifespan.

Power for Today and Potential for Tomorrow

As always, this Schrock system is Modular. That means your computer has everything it needs to meet your demands today, and it can grow with you as your needs change in the future.

Schrock Innovations is the only company in the country that offers Modular computers, and that is why our Holiday Special systems last more than 8 years while other manufacturers are lucky to get three years out of their builds.

How Can You Learn More About This Computer?

Unfortunately, you will have to wait a little while longer before we let everything out of the bag. But there are some things you can do to make sure you catch the tidbits when we do let them out.

1. Subscribe to the RSS Feed on this blog. You’ll get an email as soon as we release anything.
2. Follow me on Twitter – I am prone to moments of weakness. If something slips, it will happen here
3. Get on Schrock Innovation’s mailing list – Contact Schrock and ask to be added. It’s free and rumor has it there is a coupon involved 🙂
4. Listen to Compute This every week. Chris Goforth has a way of getting me to talk

As I type this I am downloading the 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate 3 GB ISO through the Microsoft Action Pack Subscription program.

This is not a beta, or a release candidate. This is the all-out full version of Windows 7. This is going to be a fun night! 1.5 hours remaining on download 😉

Microsoft is reporting today that the “Tear-drop attack” sample code that was claimed to successfully crash Windows 7 remotely can’t touch Microsoft’s upcoming golden child.

It seems that the person who was testing the code tested it on a release candidate version of Windows 7. The release candidate was impacted by the security problem, however Microsoft responded in their bulletin that the final release of Windows 7 (pressed to DVDs in July) is not impacted by the flaw.

This is the first specific example of a security threat impacting Windows Vista that was preemptively blocked by Windows 7.

I am sure there will be other exposed threats that will impact Windows 7, but this victory comes just in time for Vista’s October 22nd release and will add ammunition to Microsoft’s claim that Windows 7 is the most advanced operating system on the planet (a claim that Apple is making in their music on hold right now about Snow Leopard.

I have been playing around with a solid state hard drive for the past few weeks to get a better understanding of how they improve my notebook’s performance under different operating systems.

While I certainly don’t look like Goldilocks, my solid state drive experience was a lot like the classic children’s fairytale.

Windows XP on a solid state drive was fast, but at times too fast. With XP, my notebook booted so fast that I could log in, and open Firefox just to have it fail because the system had not negotiated an IP address yet.

Windows Vista was not much faster than a traditional hard drive. I got a serious case of heartburn thinking I had just spent $450 on a 120 GB solid state drive when a $60 drive would have done the same job.

Then there was Windows 7. It booted in seconds. Response times were amazing. Windows 7 was JUUUUST RIIIIIGHT!

Why is Windows 7 So Fast on a Solid State Drive?

Flash drives became fashionable when Windows XP as around, but only as a backup medium or for temporary storage.

Nine years later, a bundle of super speedy flash drives can be teamed up to create an entire hard drive with no moving parts. Lower failure rates, faster access times and no defragging.

It sounds like a match made in heaven, except that XP and Vista were hard-coded to treat all drives like they spin.

That means that unnecessary operations happen all the time on a solid state drive that tie up valuable resources and sap the power of this expensive performance booster.

That is, all operating systems except Windows 7. Windows 7 is the first Microsoft operating system that was specifically designed to detect if it is operating on a solid state drive or a rotating disk drive.

Windows 7’s secret is a technology Microsoft calls TRIM. TRIM allows Windows 7 to detect

* Enhancing device wear leveling by eliminating merge operation for all deleted data blocks
* Making early garbage collection possible for fast write
* Keeping device’s unused storage area as much as possible; more room for device wear leveling.

Microsoft is making Windows 7 available for pre-order now through July 10, 2009!

Order your copy of Windows 7 and installation from Schrock Innovations and save 58% off of the software’s regular purchase price!

Windows 7 Installed for Only $219.99!?!

If you have ever purchased an operating system upgrade, you know that they normally cost hundreds of dollars and can take a degree in computer science to install successfully.

Between drivers, updates, and lost files upgrading your operating system can be a real challenge – Unless you let Schrock’s award-winning technicians do it for you!