ianhind wrote:it's the use of the full 4Gb RAM that is tempting me
I hadn't read about that. Does that apply to the 32 bit version or just the 64 bit? I'm very happy with Vista 32 except that I've got 4Gb of RAM and a quarter of it isn't being fully utilised. I wasn't thinking about upgrading to 7 but that feature might make me reconsider!
The RC can be installed in a separate partition/drive and then gives you a choice of which OS to boot into on start up. I haven't selected XP in about six weeks now. That way you shouldn't lose anything, plus you can copy across stuff from the XP/Vista drive/partition, in fact I even run a lot of programs from my XP drive, some of them need re-registering but other than that they run fine.
Just a note - be aware that if you select the 64 bit Windows 7 and have older hardware such as printers and so on, you may not find drivers that will support the older hardware. Check it out before you commit to 64 bit
Downloading it now and I have an empty spare drive waiting. I hope when I install it it will keep away from XP on my C drive and go to its new drive without throwing files into C etc and cocking up XP....
AMD Phenom II X4 BE 965 @ 3.80GHz
nVidia GTX 560 TI 448 Cores
Tony, I got away with it by having an intimate knowledge of my hard drive make, size, free space etc. it does give you the option of which drive to install on, if you've formatted the spare drive then it should be obvious which one you want to select as it'll be all free space!
The good news is that anyone that pre-ordered the full version at the discounted price will still get it, and will not be downgraded to an upgrade version.
Otherwise cancellations of pre-orders would be somewhat frequent!
The difference between the two is that, an upgrade is just that, your upgrading from an older O/S to a newer one, where as the full version you can install either way, that being an upgrade or full install...
If the W7 upgrade is the same as the XP upgrade (not sure about Vista), the disks are the same, it's just the license that's different. You can do a fresh install with the upgrade disk, you just need to put your previous OS disk in as verification.
