drragostea,
As a follow-up to my earlier posts, I've seen a thread in one of the Windows 7 forums where others discussed the question of what is required to install an upgrade copy of Windows 7.
Though either Windows XP or Vista are considered a 'legal' upgrade, you can only follow some very specific paths (e.g. 32-bit to 32-bit, etc.), so making this work can get messy. Since you also can't really 'upgrade' Windows XP, but must instead install in place of it, most scenarios are really a fresh install anyway.
The big issue though is that you may not be able to upgrade on a clean formatted disk as we thought. Though one person thought you could insert a CD containing the original operating system virtually everyone else believes that the previous operating system must be installed and activated on the drive for the upgrade to work.
If this is the case, then a Full copy for a fresh install is what you'd prefer, since this shouldn't care if an earlier OS exists or not and would simply wipe it out if it did anyway.
honda12, though I hear what you're saying about the seemingly minor differences between Windows Vista and 7, this is primarily true only for highly technical users. Since some of the improvements in Windows 7 include both performance and usability enhancements like easier WiFi, Printing and other management along with significant improvements in both security and interconnection between systems, these can't really effectively be replaced by 'patching' an earlier OS.
Though I agree that not everyone will benefit from upgrading Vista, those whose existing equipment will support Windows 7 and who aren't normally technically knowledgable will likely find a standard set of Windows 7 systems much easier to manage and support than a mixed bag of different OS versions, no matter how close they might seem to us.
The other potential gain is that when combined with the new Microsoft Security Essentials anti-malware product that Microsoft is now providing for free, Windows 7 is really quite well secured and will automatically update both definitions and the program itself at no cost to the consumer (home) user. This also perfectly complements the included Internet Explorer 8, which includes the SmartScreen Filter technology I've mentioned here before which also performs both Phishing and Malware protection within the browser itself and has been shown in independent testing to compete favorably as some of the best browser protection in the industry.
So all-in-all, I believe that most of the non-technical among us would be far better off with Windows 7 than with anything previous, though those with a deeper technical background may not find it necessary to make a change.
Bitman
olice:
