Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If you're looking at Ultimate, chances are it's for one of these three reasons: 1) You have Vista Ultimate and don't want to lose all your programs/settings (more on this in a moment) 2) You want BitLocker hardware-level encryption. You'll need to do some tinkering with a USB key or have hardware that supports it (see comments to this review for details) 3) You regularly work in multiple languages and need to easily switch from one to the other Unlike Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Ultimate doesn't offer DreamScenes or any other eye candy different from its cousins Home and Pro. In fact, if you were a fan of the Windows Vista DreamScenes, you should know that you will be losing them when you step up to Windows 7. Some very important things you need to know about upgrading: 1) There are two types of upgrade: "in-place" (where a Vista machine upgrades to 7 and you get to keep all your programs) and "clean" (where you lose all your old programs and settings). 2) Anyone going from XP to 7 will have to go "clean". 3) Anyone going from a different Vista to 7 (for example, Vista Home up to 7 Pro, or Vista Ultimate down to 7 Home) will also have to go "clean". 4) Anyone going from any Home or Business Vista to 7 Ultimate can do an in-place upgrade. 5) Enterprise Vista can only upgrade to Enterprise 7. 6) You cannot do an "in-place" upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit. If you have to do 2) or 3), all is not lost--I'll explain in a moment. Before you even buy a 7 upgrade for your machine, stop by Microsoft's website for two things: a) download and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Run it with every device connected to the machine that you'll ever want to use in 7. It'll thoroughly examine your machine for any roadblocks and give you good advice about upgrading. Even very new machines will have one or two programs that need some checking. b) Go to the Windows 7 Compatibility Center and double-check anything that came up negative in the Upgrade Advisor (or didn't show up at all). This site lists detailed compatibility info on a LOT of different devices. Anything major, like a video card or sound card driver, I'd recommend double-checking with the manufacturer's website to be sure. This almost burned me on two of the machines that I upgraded. Last, make a backup. There's a free tool called Macrium Reflect that can do this for you. Do you have to do a "clean" install, but just want to carry over your user accounts and settings? Microsoft makes a program called Windows Easy Transfer that's already in Vista (and XP users can download it from Microsoft) that will export your accounts and settings and let you import them back again. It's very easy to use and does a good job of putting your accounts back together again, even going from XP to 7. Do you have to do the "clean" install, and you don't want to reinstall all your programs? Laplink has an offer for $19.95 that will let you use a special version of their program "PC Mover" to upgrade one machine one time. Read the documentation in detail. The most important thing to doing a "clean" install is that in the Upgrade setup you choose "Custom". Windows will take all of your major files and place them in a folder called "Windows.old". PC Mover and the Easy Transfer program will use this folder to reconstruct your system from, so this is VERY important. I wish I had more space to go into detail here...bottom line is, if you plan ahead a bit, upgrading to 7 will go very easily (and if it doesn't, you'll have something to fall back on).