Anytime upgrade.

[XS11E]

I purchased a copy of Win7 Ultimate to upgrade my PC from Win7
HomePremium. Thought I'd relate the experience if anyone is
interested.

First, the hard part (for me!) is always spending money, I found Win7
Ultimate full retail on Ebay for varying prices, spent $140 (not the
cheapest or most expensive but from a reliable seller) and it arrived
VERY quickly, I received notice it'd been shipped within hours of
payment.

I'm doing this in probably too much detail to show almost anyone can do
this upgrade w/o problems.

Yesterday it arrived, I'd already created a fresh image of drive C: for
backup so I put the 64 bit DVD in the PC and told it to "Upgrade", got
a message to stop and use the Anytime upgrade feature (I was debating
between this and fresh install, decided to try the upgrade.) Clicking
on "Help" and entering "Anytime Upgrade" got me to an on-line answer
that said, "Click here to start Anytime Upgrade", clicked and was
offered a choice to go online to buy Win7 or enter product key if I'd
already purchased. I entered the key, got a message that the key was
being checked and then a message that the upgrade would take 10 minutes
or more......

It did it. The PC rebooted a couple of times but required no more
intervention from me other than to log on when it rebooted.

It took about 15 minutes or less and finished with no problems of any
kind! All works to perfection.

Next, I installed the Windows XP mode and virtual PC with no fuss or
problems. I haven't used the XP emulator yet, that's today's project
but I have to say I'm amazed at how easy everything has been...

RANT MODE:
The above experiment makes me even more frustrated with those who claim
modern OSs are "bloated." I recall the days when OSs were lean and
compact and you had NO HELP OF ANY KIND! Cryptic error codes required
looking up the meaning in a manual but... which manual? Was it an OS
error? Did the spread sheet software give the error? Something else?

I LIKE help files, links, How-To's, etc. and with the price of HDs as
low as they are today, I have no objection to my OS using all the space
it wants to make my life easier!

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I purchased a copy of Win7 Ultimate to upgrade my PC from Win7
HomePremium. Thought I'd relate the experience if anyone is
interested.

First, the hard part (for me!) is always spending money, I found Win7
Ultimate full retail on Ebay for varying prices, spent $140 (not the
cheapest or most expensive but from a reliable seller) and it arrived
VERY quickly, I received notice it'd been shipped within hours of
payment.

I'm doing this in probably too much detail to show almost anyone can do
this upgrade w/o problems.

Yesterday it arrived, I'd already created a fresh image of drive C: for
backup so I put the 64 bit DVD in the PC and told it to "Upgrade", got
a message to stop and use the Anytime upgrade feature (I was debating
between this and fresh install, decided to try the upgrade.) Clicking
on "Help" and entering "Anytime Upgrade" got me to an on-line answer
that said, "Click here to start Anytime Upgrade", clicked and was
offered a choice to go online to buy Win7 or enter product key if I'd
already purchased. I entered the key, got a message that the key was
being checked and then a message that the upgrade would take 10 minutes
or more......

It did it. The PC rebooted a couple of times but required no more
intervention from me other than to log on when it rebooted.

It took about 15 minutes or less and finished with no problems of any
kind! All works to perfection.

Next, I installed the Windows XP mode and virtual PC with no fuss or
problems. I haven't used the XP emulator yet, that's today's project
but I have to say I'm amazed at how easy everything has been...

RANT MODE:
The above experiment makes me even more frustrated with those who claim
modern OSs are "bloated." I recall the days when OSs were lean and
compact and you had NO HELP OF ANY KIND! Cryptic error codes required
looking up the meaning in a manual but... which manual? Was it an OS
error? Did the spread sheet software give the error? Something else?

I LIKE help files, links, How-To's, etc. and with the price of HDs as
low as they are today, I have no objection to my OS using all the space
it wants to make my life easier!

Positive reports are not welcome here.

No, don't scream at me - I am just kidding, if a bit sarcastic

I do have complaints about W7, but what the heck...

 

[Alex Clayton]

RANT MODE:
The above experiment makes me even more frustrated with those who claim
modern OSs are "bloated." I recall the days when OSs were lean and
compact and you had NO HELP OF ANY KIND! Cryptic error codes required
looking up the meaning in a manual but... which manual? Was it an OS
error? Did the spread sheet software give the error? Something else?

I LIKE help files, links, How-To's, etc. and with the price of HDs as
low as they are today, I have no objection to my OS using all the space
it wants to make my life easier!

I do too. I have a few times had someone tell me how "easy" something was to
do, only to find I made such a mess all I could do was format (reinstall)
windows and start over.
It was from reading here that I chose to do a clean install on this
laptop when I got the W-7 upgrade to move it from Vista. It did work just
like others had said it would. I have been real happy with W-7. In a nut
shell kind of way, what advantage is there to going from home premium to
Ultimate?

 

[XS11E]

It was from reading here that I chose to do a clean install on
this laptop when I got the W-7 upgrade to move it from Vista. It did
work just like others had said it would. I have been real happy
with W-7. In a nut shell kind of way, what advantage is there to
going from home premium to Ultimate?

Little history, I got this PC as a HP refurb with Vista Home 64
installed and used HP's free upgrade to Win7 which went very smoothly
BUT wasn't really a true upgrade as it saved some stuff but did an
almost clean install. That's one reason I was so pleased when the next
upgrade went so trouble free.

Here's all the differences here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions Scroll down to the
chart...

The reason I went to Ultimate is because of the XP emulation, I have a
few programs that have never been modified to run on Vista or Win7 that
I'd like to use, not anything most would ever use, mostly they're for
flashing/modding cell phones.

 

[XS11E]

Positive reports are not welcome here.

I know, I should have installed Ubuntu, right? <G>

Of course I wouldn't have been able to read your post then as there's
no support for my MB or peripherals or software or.....

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I know, I should have installed Ubuntu, right? <G>

Of course I wouldn't have been able to read your post then as there's
no support for my MB or peripherals or software or.....

Yup - you could have saved yourself from having to read my posts. And posts
from the Ubuntoids. And even from most any kind of computing.

Better luck next time

I have VMware Player so that I can use XP for an old program that I still
use. I bet I could download an Ubuntu distro form VMware or somewhere and
run it. Maybe I will.

Or not...

 

[Char Jackson]

Little history, I got this PC as a HP refurb with Vista Home 64
installed and used HP's free upgrade to Win7 which went very smoothly
BUT wasn't really a true upgrade as it saved some stuff but did an
almost clean install. That's one reason I was so pleased when the next
upgrade went so trouble free.

AFAIK, it's completely normal for an upgrade to save some pre-existing
data, else it would be called a clean install, or do I have the
terminology wrong?

 

[Alex Clayton]

AFAIK, it's completely normal for an upgrade to save some pre-existing
data, else it would be called a clean install, or do I have the
terminology wrong?

I know when I went from Vista to W-7 I chose the clean install. It wiped all
the crap that Dell had loaded on this, which was fine with me. I could just
go to their site and take anything I still wanted. It did leave a file
marked Windows old. I had read several times that I did not need to save
this, and I did finally delete it.
This has a partition to reinstall windows from if ever needed. I am
assuming that if I ever do this it will put Vista back and that I would then
have to go to W-7 again.

 

[Char Jackson]

I know when I went from Vista to W-7 I chose the clean install. It wiped all
the crap that Dell had loaded on this, which was fine with me. I could just
go to their site and take anything I still wanted. It did leave a file
marked Windows old. I had read several times that I did not need to save
this, and I did finally delete it.
This has a partition to reinstall windows from if ever needed. I am
assuming that if I ever do this it will put Vista back and that I would then
have to go to W-7 again.

Understood, but I wonder what he meant when he said it wasn't really a
true upgrade when what he described was exactly an upgrade.