Windows 7 Upgrade Install

We can say for sure that our own Windows 7 upgrade experience didn’t take, oh say, a whole day, but according to Microsoft, your own just might. The boys and girls in Redmond set out with a goal of seeing the Vista to Windows 7 upgrade accomplished around five percent faster than an upgrade to Vista, and while it seems that they succeeded, the staggeringly wide range in install times has us a wee bit concerned. A variety of testing situations were put in place, and nearly every profile was tested on low-, mid- and high-end hardware. A clean install of Windows 7 on mid-to-high-end hardware took just a half-hour, but a 32-bit upgrade on a mid-range machine with 650GB of data and 40 applications took an astounding 1,220 minutes, or just under 21 hours. The wild part here is that it’s not all that uncommon for a power user / all-around nerd to have a half-terabyte of information and two score programs, and in anticipation of one install actually taking over a day, the team didn’t even bother testing this path on a low-end rig. Good thing our imaginations are in check, huh?

via Engadget

The first time you use Windows Vista, you see Welcome Center, which offers a wealth of introductory information to help you with Windows Vista. Topics include connecting to the Internet and news about Windows Vista. If you decide to close Welcome Center and instruct Windows Vista not to open it at startup, and then you change your mind, you can find it in Control Panel.

1. Click Start.

2. Click Control Panel.

3. Click System and Maintenance.

4. Click Welcome Center

Rather than putting everyone’s files in one location, Windows Vista allocates folder structures for each user, keeping your information more private and less cluttered. User Accounts are configured through User Accounts and Family Safety in Control Panel.

Note: You must be an administrator, and your organization might limit the use of administrator rights