Colbatech Solutions, LLC

There are two different ways that Windows 7 can be installed. The first way is to install it from scratch, reinstall any programs you may need, reconfigure settings, and transfer over your documents or other important files. The second way, is to perform an in-place upgrade. An in-place upgrade allows you to install a newer operating system over an older one without theoretically having to reinstall any programs or reconfigure any settings. In the case of upgrading to Windows 7, an in-place upgrades only work if you are currently running Vista. I decided to test both types of installs with the release candidate of Windows 7.
The clean install was great. Windows 7 detected all of my hardware immediately on first boot-up. This saved me a lot of time locating drivers and manually installing them. I was able to install and run all the basic applications such as Adobe Reader, Microsoft Office, Skype and other common programs without issue. The operating system has been absolutely solid for the last couple of months, giving me no blue or black screens and performing smoothly without any hiccups.
Because of my past experiences with performing in-place installs, I was skeptical of how well Windows 7 and my applications would work when installed over Vista. Upon performing the upgrade, my fears were re-recognized in several ways. First an in-place install took double or triple the time of a clean install on the same computer. In the amount of time it took to do an in-place install I could have re-installed all applications from scratch. Secondly, I had to re-install several applications anyways because they weren't designed to go through the upgrade transition. Lastly, Windows 7 itself was having problems after the upgrade. A process as simple as opening the 'System' applet in the 'Control Panel' resulted in a crashed window. Even if I was able to correct these issues, it would be much more worthwhile to just go through the clean install process. Even if all the initial problems could be solved, there would always be some question as to the integrity of the operating system.
In summary, there are very few cases, if any, in which an in-place upgrade is appropriate. Even with past operating system upgrades, it has never been a solid solution.

In my experience with any new operating system, there are often compatibility issues when running older software. This is even more so the case when running proprietary or customized software. One nice feature of Windows 7 is that, with newer hardware, you are able to run applications in an exact replica of a Windows XP environment. In this way you get the best of compatibility and a shiny new operating system. If your company is currently running all of your applications in Windows Vista without issues, Windows 7 should be a welcomed upgrade. Windows 7 has the same hardware requirements and is similar enough to Vista that very few applications that work in Vista won’t work in Windows 7. Compared to Vista and XP, Windows 7 is overall a much faster and efficient operating system. Before upgrading all machines to any new operating system, I highly recommend creating a test system, testing all of your applications and settings and then, if all is well, upgrading the rest of your organization.