The upgrade option is only for vista. If you have XP install it will convert your Windows folder to Windows.OLD and it will do a normal setup.

Quoting Forget_the_Rest:

Quote:
And if you live in Europe, you can't upgrade at all, only clean install 

I had not heard of this silly thing. We have the European Commission to thank for that. 

It is not a big issue though. When going to a new OS, it is always best do do a fresh install. The install will take much more time, since you have to re-install all apps, and restore data. But your PC probably will run much better.

There's always the option of getting a US build, I like my software in English anyway. I get lost in Dutch software, most translations are ridiculous.

Very early in development? I'm using a Release Candidate and it's expected to RTM any day now!

The reason that I said that windows 7 is still in early development is because even though the release candidate is out that doesn't mean anything there are still tons of bugs in the version. Remember this is still a beta even though it's a release candidate. I would suggest wait to see how many people actually like this version of windows meaning the release candidate 1 as compared to the release candidate 2. When microsoft releases candidate 2 for windows 7 then I think you will have to make a decision on buying it.

Quoting fredreed:

Quote:
When microsoft releases candidate 2 for windows 7 then I think you will have to make a decision on buying it.

I'm not even sure if a RC2 will ever come. In Germany M$ is already offering free updates from Vista to Win7 for all OEM copies sold after the 26th of June.

Concerning the assumed bugs: I've never seen an OS by M$ that wasn't full of bugs (except MS-DOS 5.0 (maybe)), no matter if early beta, RC or final version.
In my opinion the "unexperienced users" you mentionend above shouldn't use betas anyway, in the introducing pages M$ tried to discourage those attemps, but you know how it goes with public betas: First you find the software on a mirror server and the next thing you see is a license key on a different site.

All in all there are quite explicit instructions by M$ on how to "update" your current OS to Win7 and even now they discourage an update and explicitly recommend a clean install on a separate drive, because the beta (or RC) cannot be turned into the final version by update.
If anyone is installing beta software on a productive system that has important data stored, he might as well reformat his HDD with an axe.

Just installed Windows 7 RC on my 8 year old Dell Dimension 8100 P4 1.6 GHz that has been unused for about 3 years. Works like a beauty and the installation was very smooth. I had to upgrade the memory though, it only had 256 MB (now 768 MB). Only problem so far is it can't find any drivers for the Creative SB Live card but everything else works perfectly and not at all slow on this old computer! 

My current system set-up is as follows:

multiboot through System Commander software with these OS's:
- Windows XP English (US)
- Windows XP Japanese (Japan)

I skipped Vista but I guess I'll 'upgrade' from XP to 7 with both languages. However, thanks to System Commander I'll be able to have all 4 at the same time on my system, which is what I like to do when going to a new(er) OS. If things don't work out as planned, at least I can fall back to my previous OS(es) and even completely erase the new OS's install without any hassle.

Glad to hear DVDP runs well on Windows 7, it's one of the main applications I want running on Windows 7 US.

As for the browser issues, personally I don't have a problem with the EU Commission's decision. I think a lot of users aren't even aware that there are other and better alternatives to IE. Offering the most common browsers on the install disc of Windows and asking the user which one he or she wants to install is a step in the right direction, I think. At least it clearly shows customers that they do have a choice. For example, if it wasn't for me, both my parents as well as my wife would still be using IE instead of Firefox, simply because they were unaware that there are other possibilities out there.