OneAndOneIs2

Why not test 7 in a VM first? Surely that wold give you enough of a handle on it. From my own, very brief, test of the RC, I found 7 to do everything MS said it would - it was fast, stable and it's compatibility modes are excellent; because the test machine was so old, the only driver for the graphics card was from Win2K, and 7 installed it in compatibility mode without any irritating questions or problems.

Vista and most likely W7 will not look good in a Vm environment. The Aero GUI needs direct access to the video drivers and screen.

I would NOT do an upgrade.
Try the following:
1. Backup your Vista partition. Use whatever works for you. I use Acronis TrueImage and it works like a champ.
2. Do a clean install of W7.
3. Install whatever program products you need.
4. Restore the data for item #3 from the TI backup.

I am in the same boat as you in that I have to run Windoze and Linux. I run Windoze XP mainly for my financial and investing software which I have already tried to run under Linux but without success.

Good luck.

Thanks,
Jim

@Ray: Because the main test is how well it works on my laptop, not how well it works virtualised..

@Jim: I wasn't planning to upgrade Vista to 7. W7 would go into its own partition in a clean install, Vista would stay where it is, and only when W7 is completely sorted out would I wipe Vista.

I haven't used Windows Vista at all so I can't compare it to 7.

Windows 7 is not bad, except that it is still Windows. It's better than XP, at least.

If you're planning on dual booting, use the 32-bit version. I wasn't able to dual boot the 64-bit version with Linux because it uses EFI.

Since you're familiar enough with linux, you might want to check out PING 3.0 if you have an external hard drive.

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

It will feel like a waste of a disc, taking 25Mb, but that will let you put an image of your hard drive onto that external HDD.

FWIW, I run Windows 7 in a VM on VMware Fusion on OSX and it runs really well. I only used Vista briefly as it was so crap, but my experience so far of W7 is that it's much better.

excellent dude

yes upgrade. but make a full backup!

Hello oneandoneis2,

Just an FYI, when upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 you must upgrade the version currently installed within Windows Vista to the corresponding version in Windows 7. I.E. Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium; Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 Professional; and Windows Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate. You also cannot upgrade a 32-bit operating system to 64-bit -- to migrate from 32-bit to 64-bit will require a custom install.
Please check out the requirements here for Windows 7:
If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it requires:
•1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
•1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
•16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
•DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
You can find the official Microsoft Windows Upgrade Advisor here:
http://tinyurl.com/no4xb7

Before making any attempts at upgrading your Windows operating sytem; you should first backup all of your important data!
You can also go with the easy transfer, there is a very well planned out tutorial on the microsoft site:
http://tinyurl.com/yz2uogt

Also, please refer to Microsoft official site:
Windows 7 Compatibility: (There you will find out about hardware and software compatibilty.)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/en-us/default.aspx
There is a pulldown from which you can choose "hardware" and "software".

Finally, if you want to do some research; there are also some great articles, instructional videos and such to help with your Windows 7 migration and upgrade decisions located at our Springboard site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx

Thanks again and good luck!

John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support

...why does everyone seem to miss the part of this post where I say that I would install 7 on a different partition to Vista, and not actually upgrade Vista itself..?

Windows 7 is amazing.

From a power user's perspective ... and a developers perspective ... it's a dream.

The biggest improvement, from my perspective, is the performance increases. Everything runs extremely fast, and installing programs doesn't slow down your system. There is no more "registry rot" or "DLL rot".