As I've noted before, I have been testing Windows 7 through the beta cycle on two computers: one desktop (as a secondary multiboot option) and one laptop (as the primary OS). Now I have the released bits (aka the Windows 7 RTM build) installed on both machines as the primary OS. The process was not without pain, but the results are fairly good.

I was disappointed to discover that the RTM installer refused to upgrade release candidate (RC) installations. On my desktop, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my Vista installation to Windows 7 and reformat the partition that held the Windows 7 RC; on the laptop, I did a custom installation that moved all the old programs and files to a Windows.old folder.

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The desktop installation preserved my documents and programs, but it took several hours. The length of time wasn't too surprising considering that the installer needed to examine more than a million files and settings. In the end, I had to uninstall Acronis Backup, CodeGear Rad Studio, and the Asus motherboard utilities; I also had to upgrade Skype to the latest version. While the installer had warned of incompatibilities with SQL Server 2008, it was a false alarm, as I had already upgraded that to the compatible SP1 version.