I purchased the Windows 7 upgrade and embarked on the transition between XP Pro and Windows 7 Pro. I have a MacBook with 3 GB of RAM and a 500 GB HD and Parallels, so we're OK except for the Aero graphics, which I won't miss.
Transitioning from XP is not a straightforward process, and does require several steps. XP to Windows 7 isn't doable as an in-place install, so you have to do a custom installation that removes all of the program files and data that used to be there. Thankfully, Microsoft does provide a tutorial for the process, which includes backing up and restoring your data, but it omits an important and, it turns out, critical aspect of Windows 7 that is absent in XP.
Windows 7 requires that each account have a password. XP doesn't. I had one account without a password, and after running the Easy Transfer utility to backup my users and their files, installing Windows 7, and then running the Easy Transfer utility again to restore the users, I was presented with a dialog box to enter the password for the account that didn't have a password. Hmmm. What to do? Windows 7 demands a password, but the account doesn't have one. Ultimately, I had to cancel the Easy Transfer, which left the computer in a limbo state. I had the files, but not the users, transferred to Windows 7. Messy.
Ah, but since I always back up my Virtual Machine's hard drive files before embarking on a journey like this, I was able to delete the Windows 7 HD and restore the XP HD, where I added a password to that account.
I'm now back to square one, but am determined to get this running. For the few minutes I had Windows 7 running, it was much more responsive than XP, but I had not yet installed my Creative Suite 4, my Norton Utilities, my Office 2007, and the rest of the performance drains that we all need and love. I'll let you all know how it turns out in the next day or two, but now, it's back to work on XP.
