Samsung rocks — Dell and HP have something to learn

Yesterday I downgraded a student’s laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 7. The student was assigned a legit MS DreamSpark product key in case you were wondering.

I followed this guide, and naturally I had to remove all existing partitions prior to installing Windows 7. The guide needs to be amended as the installer for Windows 7 is quite primitive. After eliminating the existing partitions of various types, the installer imagined the system would be unable to boot from the hard drive, and refused to create any system partition and downright refused to install Windows 7 onto any partition I was able to create. Simply clear any partitions you’ve created, reboot the laptop, and retry the installer. The installer will be less confused this time and do what it’s supposed to do.

With a new and clean Windows 7, the laptop was in total isolation except for Bluetooth drivers which is of no import. A trip to the download pages at Samsung paved way to Samsung’s “SW Update” software. I installed this piece of software on my own computer, selected the right laptop model, selected the software I saw fitting, clicked on the download button, selected a target directory, and presto, all drivers were downloaded, ready to be copied to a memory stick, and subsequently copied to the laptop. A simple installer among the downloaded files let you choose what to install on the laptop and the installer handles the job with astonishment. Dell and HP, and others, you have something to learn in this regard. Samsung simply rocks!

And yes, I’m aware of HP’s (Compaq’s) SoftPaq, but it won’t help as long as the laptop is unable to use any of the network interfaces.