An absolute waste of time that is only here because of the strong level of Microsoft hate in this community. The so called "Upgrade Mess" has three components.

An absolute waste of time that is only here because of the strong level of Microsoft hate in this community. The so called "Upgrade Mess" has three components. First, rather than forcing everyone to go through the pain of reformatting to upgrade, if you own a particular current edition of Windows that has all the system files necessary to support upgrading to a corresponding Windows 7 version you will be able to do a straightforward upgrade that won't require a reformat. In the linked to article it links to a simplified chart suggestion (http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/windows-upgrade-chart-eb-remake-final3.png http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/windows-upgrade-chart-eb-remake-fin...) (compare original: http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/files/2009/08/windows-upgrade-chart.png http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/files/2009/08/windows-upgrade...) that looks nicer, but misses Vista Starter edition and might make it less obvious that you can't upgrade to 32-bit/64-bit for people that jump straight to the row for the edition they have. Either way, allowing users to upgrade without a format where possible isn't exactly a mess. Second, the article claims prices have not been announced yet. Why this would be a "mess" is unclear, but the claim itself is incorrect anyway. See http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Windows-7/category/102 http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Windows-Windows-7/categ.... Third, upgrades are only for upgrading (shock!). Like all previous versions, if you want to upgrade you will need an existing operating system install to upgrade from. Oh, and it ends with a free plug for Laplink - awesome calibre journalism.