Upgrading to Windows 7

The retail version of Microsoft’s highly anticipated Windows 7, in the form of various editions was released in retail form in October of 2009. And since then many Microsoft Windows users have upgraded to Windows 7 mainly because of the wide variety of new and improved features and also because of the lack of bugs and short comings which were existing in its predecessor Windows Vista.

From Windows Vista to Windows 7

Microsoft offered upgrade options to users of Windows XP and Windows Vista in the form of OEM upgrades, upgrade editions from Microsoft or the full retail version of the Windows 7.

Mostly users have to perform clean installs of Windows 7 on their computers, however Microsoft gave details of the migration to Windows 7 and according to it users of Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate will be able to easily upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate respectively. Users having Windows Vista versions other than that will be performing clean installs.

Upgrade Requirements

Upgrade requirements of Windows 7 suggest that first of all the base language of the operating system should stay the same as the language being chosen on Windows 7.

The user’s hard disk should have 9GB of free space on it to facilitate the upgrade installation.

The upgrade installation of Windows 7 can occur only on the same partition on which Windows Vista is already installed.

Application programs as well as any user data existing in the system will be migrated to the new installation of Windows 7 automatically.

The major advantage of performing a upgrade install is that you can save yourself the trouble of reinstalling all your various application programs and related compatibility issues.

Performing Clean Install

A clean installation is usually the preferred and mostly recommended path to adopt when making the move to a new operating system. Because in the case of Microsoft Windows just too many unwanted or old settings can build up and stay behind in any old installation. Often a clean start is the best thing to do to your system.

In case of Windows 7 a total of 16GB hard drive space should be available for clean installs.

If a user is upgrading from a 32-bit version to a 64-bit version then a clean install will be the definite requirement.

Windows Anytime Upgrade (WAU)

Microsoft provides an interesting upgrade method which is known as the Windows Anytime Upgrade (WAU) which allows users to upgrade anytime to a better version of the Windows 7 family, once they have installed or upgraded to Windows 7. The purchase of an upgrade key is required which allows to receive additional features of Windows 7. For example a user can upgrade from Windows Vista Home edition to the corresponding Windows 7 Home edition and then later on upgrade to Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate.

In Windows 7 every next edition is basically a superset of its previous Windows 7 editions so while upgrading, users will not lose any features found in the previous versions.