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Deciphering Win7 Upgrades: The Official Chart

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zridling:
Walt Mossberg asked, and Microsoft created a nifty upgrade path chart:

Over the past two weeks, in my Personal Technology columns, here and here, I’ve explained some of the challenges and limitations that will be involved in upgrading an existing Windows XP or Windows Vista PC to the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system, due out October 22. Several readers asked me to publish a chart showing which current versions of Windows could be easily upgraded to which planned versions of Windows 7, and which couldn’t. So I asked Microsoft to supply such a chart we could publish, and the company graciously did so. It is reproduced below, unaltered.


PNG version

Innuendo:
Not much to add to this but to add that the in-place upgrade procedure is sweet. Microsoft has done a lot of work on this part of the installer and it shows. There's none of the flakiness of previous upgrade install routines.

I've done a few in-place upgrades on some Vista systems and every one of them has come out of the process as if Win7 had been cleanly installed on a formatted hard drive & then the applications and games installed after.

Microsoft should be very proud of this accomplishment.

mouser:
I still always prefer to do a clean install.. It's just a good opportunity to learn how to backup stuff you need and get rid of the stuff you don't.
If you can afford it, I still think the ideal solution is to upgrade PCs when you upgrade your OS, and keep your old machine as is.

Josh:
Mousey, I couldn't agree more. I will be buying a new PC upon my return from deployment. That will be my Windows 7 machine. That said, I will be "upgrading" my wife's machine from Vista to 7. I absolutely loved vista and had no issues with it. UAC was a great tool which helped my wife learn when a program was doing something it shouldn't be. Usually that would result in a call to me which would result in saved time by her not installing spyware or some unneeded application.

I will be doing a clean install, hence the quoted "upgrading" comment, as I feel that upgrading an OS is really not a good idea for compatibility reasons. But yes, I cannot wait to get my new XPS system with Win7 in it :)

zridling:
Another benefit that Win7 users will love is that installation time has been drastically cut, as has boot time.

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