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(So is anyone here taking off from work so they can upgrade to Windows 7?)

21 Hours to Upgrade to Windows 7

http://vista.blorge.com/2009/09/13/wind ... n-install/

Should you upgrade or do a clean install once Windows 7 hits? Which will take longer, which will cause more bother? I’m afraid those questions aren’t easy to answer because it all depends on what system you have, how much data you have saved and what applications you have running. Microsoft reports that one Vista to Windows 7 upgrade could take almost a whole day to complete.

Windows 7 is now little more than a month away from being released on General Availability. At this time, anyone who wants it will be able to purchase a copy of Microsoft’s new operating system and take it home immediately, assuming of course that the retailer has it in stock. The only question at that point is whether to upgrade your system or to back everything up and perform a clean install instead.

I would always recommend a clean install because although it’s more work, it means you have a nice fresh system complete with new OS to play around with. It also gives you a chance to spring clean your computer, deciding what really needs to be moved over during the swap from one OS to the next.

However, sometimes a clean install isn’t an option, or at least isn’t a very attractive one. In which case an upgrade is needed. Some upgrades can go very smoothly and not take too long at all. But others can be very painful and take an absolute age to complete.

Ars Technica reports on the test results Microsoft compiled while testing out the upgrade times from Vista to Windows 7. The time each upgrade takes varies by a huge margin. Tests were conducted on different typical user profiles, from people with very little on their computer to those with huge hard drives filled with data and apps aplenty installed.

As you can see on Microsoft Software Engineer Chris Hernandez’s blog, the upgrade times vary from just 30 minutes (no data and no applications on mid to high-end hardware) to an incredible 1220 minutes (650Gb of data and 40 applications on mid-end hardware). 1,220 minutes equates to 20 hours and 20 minutes, which is one hell of an upgrade by anyone’s standards.

Although it’s that upgrade time that stands out, it should be noted that most Vista to Windows upgrades took a reasonable 2-6 hours. But even for the people who fit those user profiles, I’d still recommend a clean install if it’s a possibility.

I did a clean install of w7 for a client's system and it did take a long while, but no where near 21 hours. I just loaded jaunty on one of my systems. I was done in less than an hour.

To be fair, this was an upgrade on a system with 650mb of data already on there. I don't know what the heck it was doing to take 21 hours though. I've upgraded some pretty beefy linux systems and they never took anywhere near that long and it was more than the OS, we are talking all sorts of packages.

Now I recently did a debian net install - about 30 minutes, slackware 13 install - 27 minutes, and a fedora net install 4 hours maybe. I am used to installs under 45 minutes max so the Fedora one had me floored.

The beautiful thing, though is that in 30 minutes I not only have an OS but I have a fully functioning system with practically every application I use on a regular basis. In about another 20 I have every application I could want an more and they are all up to date. I just don't get the allure of the other options out there.

I usually do an upgrade as a last resort otherwise you will bring old problems with you. I will image the original drive then do the clean install. I can always recover any settings from the drive image. User should have all original software. I will admit that when I worked as a tech we had some rare situations where a clean install was impossible such as special software installed in student labs. They always took longer. One tip that might save some time is to clean out all the cache and temp files and even disable the swap space and delete it. I would also backup any data files not directly needed by the system in addition to the image. and then delete the files on the system to be upgraded Disabling any viruscan, spyware , or any memory resident programs will help also. Run a registry cleaner in safe mode. Do everything you can to minimize the system disk space used and memory used. Once you get the upgraded system the way you want image it again so you have a clean install for emergencies. been there done that.