Windows 7 upgrade ...?

[RedDog382]

Has anyone upgraded from Windows Vista to 7?

I have a laptop I bought specifically for my side business just before Windows 7 came out and can get a free upgrade before the end of the month. I've heard it is better than Vista in several respects.

It was suggested that I have someone image my current hard drive before I attempt the upgrade so I don't lose any info. How/where do I do this?

[MacGyver]

Its feels similar to vista, but new under the hood. I'd do it for free. As for saving your files, get an external USB hard drive and save all your important files to the external drive. Everyone should back-up their files anyway.

[Boss252]

If Vista I would upgrade. If your cmputer didn't come with a Ghost partition i would have someone make a ghost copy of it or you can do it yourself with Norton Ghost or a similar program and save it to another hard drive, flash drive or DVD rom. That way if anything goes wrong you can take your computer back to day one. i always ghost before i do an upgrade just in case.

[Boss252]

Try this program to clone your drive http://www.clonezilla.org/
it's free and works well

[rschap1]

I just goy a new laptop with 64 bit 7 on it. I do like it a lil' better than Vista, but don't do much HD stuff on it. I was just told that a CLEAN install rather than an upgrade will eliminate alot of chances for headaches and troubles. No personal experience to verify that, but some that seem to be much better geeks than me told me that a few times. GOOD LUCK. I was also directed to some 7 forums that have some advice and tips to use all the new features.

[MacGyver]

A clean install is always the way to go. 64 bit is great, but I don't think there are too many programs that take advantage of it.

[DonziGirl]

You're seeing more and more programs with the 64 bit.

[Audiofn]

Go for it. I have had it on my desktop for about 4 months now and my brother has had it on his laptop for about 7 or 8 months (maybe more) now and we both love it. There are a lot of things it does that you kind of find out over time that are very cool.

[Tantrum]

If you are currently running Vista upgrade to Windows 7 now. If you held out from Vista (because it sucks) and are still running XP, stay with XP until Windows 7's first service pack released.

[jhenrie]

Did the free upgrade . Much better. The upgrade disc gave me a choice to upgrade or fresh install. It saved all my pre-loaded apps and data vista etc in a file for recovery. Since nov , happy I did it.

[Sea-Dated]

I will be sticking with XP for a while. My Step-Dad just got 7 and so far I am not that impressed but then again, I have never had to deal with Vista.

[MacGyver]

I will be sticking with XP for a while. My Step-Dad just got 7 and so far I am not that impressed but then again, I have never had to deal with Vista.

Vista's not all that bad. I haven't had a single issue. But I'll probably upgrade to Win7 after SP1 is released.

[Wobble]

vista is so so but it definitely has compatibility issues even with older MS products. I intend to clean install Windows 7 32bit on a computer we use to evaluate our software on. 64 bit is still going to greatly limit your software and hardware options.

[glassdave]

I will be sticking with XP for a while. My Step-Dad just got 7 and so far I am not that impressed but then again, I have never had to deal with Vista.

+1

I had Vista on my work laptop and it basically was not able to run anything i bought it for (graphics stuff, plotter, hell not even able to access the internet tethered thru my celly) I dumped it and went bact to XP. I know enentually I'll probably hafta make the switch and I've at least been hearing a few good things about 7.

[Audiofn]

Why are you guys waiting for Service pack 1? Have you actually heard anything or are you just waiting because that has been the historical situation with windows releases? IMO no need to waite. I have not had a single issue at all with it.

Dave I run a lot of programming software that is not "cretified" and have not had any issues. You can also run a XM emulation kind of mode if you do have problems. It still takes a little getting used to things but once you do it works very well and actually makes a lot more sence then XP. The new structure keeps your registries cleaner.

Jon

[Wobble]

Why are you guys waiting for Service pack 1? Have you actually heard anything or are you just waiting because that has been the historical situation with windows releases? IMO no need to waite. I have not had a single issue at all with it.

Dave I run a lot of programming software that is not "cretified" and have not had any issues. You can also run a XM emulation kind of mode if you do have problems. It still takes a little getting used to things but once you do it works very well and actually makes a lot more sence then XP. The new structure keeps your registries cleaner.

Jon

Not really waiting, there can be a lot of time involved and I haven't had enough to spare. Once I get it installed on a suitable machine there is a lot of testing involved with various hardware and software before I can ok it as a platform for our customers.

Actually yes, service pack 1 is always worth waiting for

[Tantrum]

Why are you guys waiting for Service pack 1? Have you actually heard anything or are you just waiting because that has been the historical situation with windows releases? IMO no need to waite. I have not had a single issue at all with it.
Dave I run a lot of programming software that is not "cretified" and have not had any issues. You can also run a XM emulation kind of mode if you do have problems. It still takes a little getting used to things but once you do it works very well and actually makes a lot more sence then XP. The new structure keeps your registries cleaner.
Jon

Yes...Microsoft has historically rushed to market and let end users do there bug hunting.
Vista was/is a networking nightmare from both the compatibility and security stance. If your running Vista, going to Windows 7 will be an improvement. Vista has soooo many issues it is essentially why they released Windows 7 and not just a service pack for Vista....they (Microsoft) want
"Vista" to go away.
Windows XP has had its compatibility, buggy issues worked out (as much as a PC / Windows platform will allow) and therefore is the best choice IMO.
Many home users may or may not be affected by any off this, any of the three platforms will access Serious Offshore so it may be a mute point.

[Audiofn]

From my research the Service pack 1 will not be needed to waite for. The upgrades in service pack 1 will mostly be drivers and such for example USB 3.0 and so on. I always use their profesional versions of their software and have not had any networking issues. I do know that you can have those issues using home and home premium.

[TurboJoe]

I would not wait. Unlike previous versions of windows, Microsoft rolled out a HUGE beta and release candidate test network. Many people, I included have been running windows 7 for almost a year now, well before the official launch. Microsoft tried really hard not to have a bad launch. IMO, they succeeded.

I'm in charge of IT for a small company, bunch of servers, 20 or so workstations. I refused to upgrade to vista. I tried windows 7 because I had a system lying around and I was bored. I figured it would be a fun buggy experiment (back in April last year I believe). What actually happened was I moved to win7 full time with in a week. Every single driver, program ect that I wanted to use just worked. The only issues I had was with a database program that doesn't use a 64 bit version of MSsql. That isn't a win7 problem, just a 64 bit problem.

I wouldn't be to scared of 64 bit win 7, it runs 32bit apps just fine. Vista 64, and xp64 have been out now for quite some time, so drivers have not been an issue for me at all.

I say upgrade to win7 NOW! No reason to wait, it just works. The features are great, its very stable. My office comp stay up for weeks at a time, and has never crashed.

[Wobble]

OK so I bit the bullet and clean installed win7 pro 32 bit (part number fqc-00130) on a year old XP HP dv9308 notebook.

Absolutely no issues whatsoever. I am so impressed with Microsoft for a change I cant hardly believe it.

I ran our bespoke software and only had to change one setting relating to background color. This same software works perfectly on XP but would not communicate to our external hardware on vista.

Just ordered two more oem copies one 32 bit and one 64 bit to try on a couple of other computers.

I would normally expect to burn through a couple of weeks trying to get a new operating system installed and operational with our software/hardware. This time I have less than 5 hours invested.