Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Upgrade [Old Version]

I've been using Windows 7 since its beta release, but my laptop's been running the final version for weeks now. I really disliked Vista and preferred XP still, but Windows 7 has tipped the scales...finally. Windows 7 has been reliable and it's snappier than Vista. Windows 7 sips laptop battery power so my 1-year-old Dell XPS M1530 runs longer under Win7 than it did under Vista. But what I really like about Windows 7 are the new or improved features it offers. Here's a list of my favorites:#1 VIRTUAL LIBRARIESWith virtual libraries, the special folders like Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos have all become libraries. Instead of being a physical storage location, they're indexes that point to one or many locations on the computer you're using, as well as other computers you're networked with. In a home setting, where you're running Windows Home Server, you can now easily direct file stores to your server. When coupled with Offline Files & Folders (a features that the non-Home editions of Windows offers since XP), you can easily take your server data with you, even when you're in a disconnected state. Also in the home, housemates can easily see each others' data by including their respective folders in one another's libraries. When you search a library, you're searching your computer and any other computer that has folders you've added to your library. This is, for me, the single best feature of Windows 7, and is an excellent reason to upgrade.#2 START SEARCHThe Start Search has been improved in Windows 7 so results appear instantly as soon as you click the Start button, and then either type the name of a program on your computer, or a task you'd like to perform (like, "change my display settings"). No more hunting folder hierarchies to find that elusive program, or spend time figuring out where Microsoft has placed something in the Control Panel. This is a tremendous time-saver.#3 AERO SNAPThe Aero user interface has three new tricks -- Shake, Peek, and Snap -- but only Aero Snap is a major leap forward. Have you ever tried comparing the contents of two windows together, side-by-side? It's painful to do because you have to fiddle with resizing the two windows. With Aero Snap, now all you do is grab the title bar of one window, sling it to the left, and Windows 7 will automatically resize the window to fill-up one-half of your screen display. Do the same with a 2nd window by slinging it to the right, and it'll fill-up the right-side of your display. You can start comparing two windows in...an Aero Snap. Aero Shake and Peek are cute, but not nearly so helpful.#4 TASKBARGone is the Quick Launch bar that too many people didn't know existed. Now, the whole Taskbar is a quick launch bar -- drag and drop any program icon onto the bar, and you're one click away from starting the program. Also, it's so easy to move the taskbar around now. I keep it on the left vertical on my computer. Gone is the system tray, too -- Notification Area takes its place. The Action Center alerts you to anything you need to do to keep your computer working smoothly.#5 PROGRAM COMPATIBILITY (including XP Mode)Any program can be run in one of many compatibility modes now. Windows 7 has a wizard that will help you pick the right, earlier version of Windows under which to run an older program. You can do the same thing more quickly by right-clicking on a program icon, click the Compatibility tab, enable Compatibility mode, and select the earlier version of Windows you want. For truly stubborn XP programs, the Professional edition offers XP Mode -- a fully licensed, virtualized copy of Windows XP. Note that your hardware must support virtualization for this to work.#6 STICKY NOTESLess functional that the Vista Sticky Notes -- which nobody used -- but now I actually use Sticky Notes to put reminders on my Desktop. They're quick, easy, and work just like a regular Post-It note only you don't get fingerprints on your screen!#7 JUMP LISTSThere are two kinds -- Jump lists that let you quickly pick a task to perform, and Jump lists to quickly select a document to open and edit in the associated program. These are nice time-savers.#8 SAVED SEARCHESIn Windows Explorer, you can create filtered searches and then save them in your Favorites for later use. This is handy to find filtered data in the future. When you re-execute the search, it creates a dynamic results set (so your search is never stale).#9 CONTENT VIEW & ARRANGINGAlso in Windows Explorer, two new features. Now you can arrange a folder into subdivisions by date (great for your pictures folders!). You can use the Content view to combine thumbnails of files along with details that usually are found only in the Details view.#10 USER ACCOUNT CONTROLMost everyone hated UAC in Vista (even though it helped to keep your computer safe). In Windows 7, Microsoft tamped down the annoyance factor of UAC. You can change your date and time without setting off UAC, for example. You can also decide whether UAC should go into secured Desktop mode whenever it does get triggered (secured Desktop is when your screen darkens and you're forced to respond to UAC's dialog box asking permission to run a program or make a change to your system). You can easily turn-off UAC, too.#11 PAINT, WORDPAD, CALCULATORAll three of these utilities got updated. Wordpad and Paint have the Office-like "ribbon" now, and Calculator has a few new memory keys, touch sensitivity, and a Programmer view for those dealing with hexidecimals and binaries.#12 HOMEGROUP SHARINGThis is the easiest way to share data with others in your (home) network. HomeGroup creates a password that is shared among computers, and that takes care of all the issues with user accounts, file permissions and "access denied" problems. While not appropriate for corporate use, this is great for the home. I made this feature last because I'm not using it -- I just think it's a great idea for inexperienced users. Note: all the networked computers need to be running Windows 7 to make HomeGroup sharing work.Upgrading advice: I went through the upgrade process twice. Here's what I learned to do before and after the upgrade: 1) Remove Adobe Reader and reinstall the latest version (9.2 as I write this) after the upgrade. Older versions of Reader won't render correctly in Windows 7 and an IE8 browsing session. 2) Remove your antivirus, anti-malware and anti-spyware programs, and reinstall them after the upgrade using the latest versions available. 3) Remove any virtualization programs (like VMWare Workstation) and reinstall following the upgrade. 4) After the upgrade, look for the latest video driver from the video card maker, not by your computer hardware vendor (in my case, it was getting a new driver from Nvidia rather than from Dell).Looking to do a clean install using this upgrade disk? You can, but here's how. Insert the DVD and choose "Custom" to do the clean install. During the install, DO NOT enter your product id or activate Windows -- yet. Instead, you'll finish the clean install, reboot, then use your DVD to do an upgrade of the clean install of Windows 7. Yes, you're upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 7. After you upgrade, then enter your product id and activate Windows. I haven't tried this out personally, but others have and have done so successfully. Add a comment to my review to share your experience if you go this route. Final note: This tip isn't intended to circumvent the stipulations in the licensing agreement for upgrading your computer. If you're not entitled to upgrade (because, say, you're using Windows 95, 98, 2000, or ME), then you must buy the full version. As I tell my kids, "Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing." :-)And finally, my few quibbles with Windows 7: My Dell XPS M1530 has always had sporadic issues resuming from a sleep or hibernate state under Vista. That still is the case, even with Windows 7. I'm not convinced, though, that the underlying problem is an operating system issue as much as a hardware/BIOS problem, so I can't knock Windows 7 for this problem. Not all my laptops have had similar power-on problems, even under Vista, so my advice to you is to NOT expect Windows 7 to solve any power-on problems from a sleep or hibernate state if you've currently got those problems with your laptop.Lastly, if you like to periodically examine the Reliability Monitor in Vista, it's not as nice in Windows 7 -- there is no precise data value assigned to your machine's ever-changing reliability metric. And it's impossible to find in the Control Panel (but it's easy to do a Start Search on). The graph is still there, though, and it's updated hourly instead of daily. For most people, I'm guessing this is a complete non-issue.In short, think of Windows 7 as Windows Vista done right.

If you've had the chance to see Apple's newest attack add against Windows in which the nerdy PC guy goes back through time talking about how the most recent version of Windows will fix all the problems from the last, you might be asking yourself if it really is worth upgrading to Windows 7. Aside from the fact that the add is grossly unfair (considering Apple released quite a few OS during the same years as Windows, and none of them were perfect either), the add has a point: some Windows versions have been inferior or even downright terrible (ME for example). That said, Windows 7 is a great OS, really a dramatic improvement in many ways, and should not be ignored. The short answer is you should absolutely upgrade from either XP or Vista. The longer answer is still a yes, but that you need to understand what you're buying and how you can use it first.I think much of the confusion about this version of Windows 7 surrounds the title 'upgrade.' Many have taken 'upgrade' to mean that one can seamlessly move from XP or Vista without having to reinstall anything. This is not always the case depending on what OS you are upgrading from. Here 'upgrade' means that you are 'upgrading' from one OS to another. The retail versions are being sold for systems that have no OS in place at all--for example a new system build. I agree that Microsoft (and Amazon for that matter) could and should have been explicit about this--unfortunately they were not, and that's left a sour taste in the mouths of many, which I totally understand. Adding to the confusion is that you can seamlessly upgrade from Vista Professional with this version, but NOT Visa Home Premium, NOR Vista Ultimate. Microsoft did not do a good job of making the seamless upgrade paths clear, so here they are:If you are upgrading from XP (any version) you MUST do a clean install of Windows 7. No seamless upgrade route is available. However, you CAN do a dual boot installation that will allow you to keep XP and run it in tandem with Windows 7. This is a great route if you have programs that may not run on Windows 7 (I've yet to find one myself--everything I have runs perfectly).If you have XP, you should do a clean install. Even if it is time consuming, it bears a multitude of benefits for you and your computer in the long run. If you're dead set on upgrading from XP and keeping your programs, you could try Laplink Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant but I would NOT recommend it.If you are upgrading from Vista, here is what you need for a seamless upgraded:Vista Home Premium: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium UpgradeVista Professional: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional UpgradeVista Ultimate: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate UpgradeKeep in mind that you MUST install the same system type (32-bit or 64-bit) as your current version of Vista to have a seamless upgrade route available! You cannot upgrade from a 32-bit to a 64-bit system and keep your programs (well actually you can keep some of them, but more on that later). Since you are provided both 32-bit and 64-bit installation disks, you can choose which version you want to run. If you have newer hardware, 64-bit is probably the way to go as it is faster and will allow you to take advantage of more than 3.5gb of system RAM.The silliest part of the upgrade scheme is that you CANNOT do a downgrade 'upgrade.' In other words, you cannot downgrade from Visa Ultimate to Windows 7 Professional through the seamless route! This defies logic and explanation from Microsoft, and is the reason I've knocked a star off an otherwise nearly perfect OS.Personally I did a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit over a Vista 64-bit system (I chose the clean install method because I believe it represents the best route to a trouble free and 'clean' feeling system). I installed over my old Windows directory (which I had backed up by creating a disk image using Acronis True Image Home just in case anything went wrong. Installation took about 30 minutes, actually much faster than any other OS install I've ever done. All of my hardware was recognized and drivers were installed without a hitch. The old windows files are moved to a windows.old file which contains all of your user accounts, program files, and old Windows files. It is possible to open the programs file (in windows.old) and copy over many programs into your new programs file and some of them will work perfectly fine. I was able to do with with all my web browsers, a few computer games, and some random applications. Not EVERYTHING will work, but many will and it's worth at least testing it out.I've since upgraded several other computers (my wife's laptop, a few computers at work). My wife's was a simple streamline upgrade from vista home to Windows 7 home (32-bit to 32-bit). It took a bit longer, probably about an hour, but managed to keep all programs and settings from Vista. The others were clean install upgrades. The only one that I had an issue with was upgrading a 32-bit system to a 64-bit system. I installed to a different hard drive and booted up to W7 just fine. However, I could not delete the old windows files from the previous installation. I followed various Googled help pages on taking ownership of files, etc., but was unable to get all the files to delete no matter what I did. Ultimately I was forced to physically remove the hard drive, put it into an enclosure, and delete the files using a separate computer. The UAC (User Account Control) system that prevents system files from being deleted was in this case out of control and impossible to overcome--even for an middle-advanced computer user who knows how to troubleshoot/problem solve using online resources. For someone with less experience, it would have been even more frustrating I am sure.Many others have gone into great detail about the feature set of Windows 7 and the various improvements from Vista, so I will not spend much time running through all of them again. Suffice it to say that Aero works wonderfully, QuickSnap is amazing, especially on a larger monitor, and that all of the visual tweaks are nicely done and very welcome. The reorganization of the start menu is wonderful and makes the W7 task bar nearly perfect. Add a simple dock program to the mix like RocketDock (google it) and this OS is hands down better than even Snow Leopard--which is pretty awesome.Performance is also great. My boot time went from 1:47 to :56! Nearly a minute faster! (Hardware: E8500, P45 Asus Striker MB, 8GB ram, Hd4870 x2 in crossfire). Overall the OS just 'feels' faster, snappier, and easier to use. Everything Vista wasn't, W7 is.I'm very pleased with W7, and aside from some miserable communication from Microsoft about what upgrade means and what can upgrade to what, it's nearly flawless. If you want a stable, fast, visually appealing and advances OS, W7 will not disappoint. Just make sure you know what you're buying so that you don't end up dissatisfied.4/5 Stars.