Well I pulled the plug and went with Windows 7. Got a good deal on 3 licenses. Only 2 comps but what the heck. It was an award for doing some good things. If you don't know it, you can't upgrade from XP to W7. You have to do a complete install.
So first I backed up all my data using acronis. Then I went to the MicrosoftStore and started the download. I tell you it was huge and long. I think 2.24 gigs. All downloaded at 320 kb/s. I haven't had something take so long since I installed Air Warriors at 28.8k. It was painful to watch so I tried to keep myself busy with household chores. Yet there was a quite a bit of anticipation. Like watching your wife undress slowly. To make matters worse once it gets to a gig it then only updates 100s of a gig. So you see less numbers rolling by.
Once finally loaded I figure I'm set. So I hit all the appropriate prompts and continue. One prompt asked to see if you could upgrade from the current OS. I check it out. Nope, couldn't. Then it led me to a set of instructions. I figure 1 page of ads and 5 lines of instructions. Not so. It was 17 pages of instructions. Fortunately there not nearly that many were relevant but still you should read them. One good thing though was the recommendation of using Windows Easy Transfer to transfer your data from your old system to an external hard drive or a USB drive. I don't have an external hard drive. I do have this convenient USB flash drive containing that would hold all of 4 gb.
I download Windows Easy transfer and start the process. Holy cow, I've managed to grab 39 gb of data. I sadly look at the flash drive. That flash drive is 2.5 times bigger than my first hard drive which was 1.6 gb. I have an external hard drive that I added just for backups but it said external. I decide I'm okay since the system does not reside on the extra drive. Now I cannot say enough good things about Windows Easy Transfer. It is Easy! Further it puts the files in the correct order and recovers your settings. However 39 gbs took 39 minutes.
Finally that is done. I restart installing W7. I get an error. I've never saw this error in my life. The installation was working and now it's not. I go to desk top and check a few things. Not sure what. Then I restart. Same error. Back to desktop to make sure every program is down. All seem to be. I restart the installation. It works this time. I'm cautiously optimistic. It seems to go through the first 3 phases fairly fast. Once it gets to finallizing it takes forever. I thought it was hung up. Staying patient I let it proceed.
I left the room to get some other things done and watch tv. Then when I came back it was done. That would be 7 hours after I first started. Now I have to personalize some things and learn the program. One really neat thing is that W7 installed my printer drivers, internet connection, and video card drivers. Then it adjusted my display to the proper resolution automatically. That must have been part of the reason it took so long in the finalizing stage.
I went back to the instructions I printed off earlier to check on the procedure to restore my data. Glad I did. You want to restore the data prior to loading any programs. This is huge and Windows Easy Transfer is already loaded with W7. I restore the data and it only takes 27 mintues to restore. Then I load MS Office and all my data was there. Same for Quicken, iTunes, IE, and so on.
W7 has a very clean look to it. You can pin your favorite programs to the task bar and then review what is opened by running the cursor over the program. There are some other cool features as well. I'm not totally familiar with them but they look promising. I think MS did such a bad job on Vista that they went all out on W7. Yes I know it uses the kernal from Vista.
One thing I will tell you is make sure that your Email is completely shut down. Something I forgot to do. For instance when I close my email I still can see new arriving email coming across my screen. I lost an important email but did see who it came from. All of my programs worked as well. Only one I had an issue with was the sound drivers. I kept choosing the wrong ones. Then when I found the right one I had to load it from Hong Kong at 54 kbs/s. Another painfully slow process.
So far I'm impressed with it.
