To 7 Or Not To 7

As some of you know I purchased a new laptop a couple of weeks ago. It's awesome, I'm loving it.

It has Vista Premium 64bit. This is my first experience with Vista and again, I'm loving it.

Along with my purchase was a free upgrade to Windows 7 Premium 64 bit. I've sent in my information and received my confirmation email that it will ship in October, when the official release takes place.

I'm so torn. I'm liking Vista, however upon reading about 7 and watching a few vids of it in action, it looks very cool and I'm excited to try it. I'm also aware of and afraid of the horror stories that sometimes happen when changing OS'.

I don't know what to do.

One thought I had was to just take the Windows 7 and put it on my desktop pc. It's a Dell XPS 410, 3gb mem, 250gb hd, Nvidia graphics, decent sound card, etc. Oh, but I'm running XP Home Media Center, SP3.


This rig runs great, with some help from a couple of really good friends.

However, I was told that I probably can't just use my windows upgrade on the XPS rig. So, that's out.

I'm still torn on upgrading to 7 on my new laptop. I'm a big scardy cat when it comes to PC's and working on them.

I guess if I choose t upgrade and don't like it, or something goes wrong, I can always use my restore discs and go back to Vista.

So, whats you're experiences with Windows 7 thus far and how hard / easy was the installation?

I only tried it on a virtual machine and never remembered about it anymore.

I think that your best bet is to be sure that you have a way of returning to your original installation and that you have backups of all your important files, that way you can always return to the previous situation (and backups are a good thing, I must make some myself ).

I also think that you could wait some time after the official launch and look for other people with the same laptop model and see if there are any problems reported (lack of drivers, for example, or some incompatibility), if there is none then you can try to upgrade.

reply to post by elevatedone

There should be no problem upgrading from Vista to Windows 7, coz this OP is essentially Vista. But you may heed the advice from the previous poster.

Short, simple answer, YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, you are stuck with win7 64 bit as a direct upgrade.

Here is the real situation.

Win7 is faster/more stable/ more cooperative with software............. than Vista, period.

Think of it like this, Visata is the "Alpha 1 version of released win 7 finished.

That said, their is "NO" direct upgrade path fromXP to win 7.:bnghd:

What that means is you must formate the drive and install win 7 cold, from XP.



[edit on 8/10/2009 by mrmonsoon]

[edit on 8/10/2009 by mrmonsoon]

Ok, so it looks like I'll be upgrading to 7 in October.


I should probably DL service pack 2 before then... hmmm more work... :shk:

reply to post by elevatedone


If your system is working fine I don't see any reason to install SP2, if you are going to replace it so soon.

service pack 2 is nice,but still the final 7 ultimate its better,its the best new OS,still microsoft could have done better,but still the best

I'll probably upgrade to 7 in October. So as far as SP2, hmmm to wait or not to wait....

el, you "WILL" download Vista sp2 to your desktop (lappy)

Togather, we "WILL" DO THE COMPLETE INSTALL.

A couple hours in chat wilol do the trick.

Actually, only about 10% of the fixes in sp2 are available seperatly from MS, from their own mouths.

All this assumes a upgrade as opposed to a clean install.

Upgrade keeps all your stuff and only changes the operating system.
Clean install implies formating the drive and load from scratch, without even so much as an itch.:shk:

reply to post by mrmonsoon


Thats why I pay you the big bucks.


Thanks buddy, I'll be able to use the XPS and have the lappy available again as soon as Supr finds something to occupy her time with.

Originally posted by mrmonsoon

That said, their is "NO" direct upgrade path fromXP to win 7.:bnghd:

Why would you want to "upgrade" from XP to W7? There is nothing in W7 that would render XP obsolete. W7 is nothing but debugged Vista -- the name has a bad echo to it. Hence Window 7. Also your applications coded before Vista won't do well with W7. I can see it all the time on forums dedicated to a particular application. People who "upgraded" to Vista began to experience problems.

I bet you that the software developers won't be able to patch XP with W7 successfully to sell their application to a wider range of customers.

reply to post by stander


Why is painfully obvious.

Many people with XP would like to upgrade to win 7.

Most will not be willing/able to save data/load win 7, reload apps and data.

:shk::shk::shk::shk::shk::shk::shk::shk::shk: