Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack for XP or Vista users, 3 User Licence (PC DVD)

I bought this pack to upgrade 2 home laptops and a desktop running Vista (32-bit), XP and Vista (64-bit) respectively. Firstly, while I'm not generally Microsoft's biggest fan I have to say this seems good value for money. You get 3 instances of the Home Premium version to replace whatever Windows deployment you may currently have (and since most home PCs come with Windows OEM that's fine). Home Premium is a mid-range Windows 7 suite which caters for most home PC needs - you don't get things like domain access or some backup capabilities, but this is more aligned to office deployment. Thus far it's catered for all my needs.In terms of the deployment you have two options: upgrade or reinstall. This is really good news and surprised me somewhat- I was expecting it to upgrade Vista meaning you had loads of disk space used up which you don't need. Whilst you can do that (I actually did for one laptop... more of that in a moment) you also have the option for a clean install. In this case, everything of value (windows directory, program files) is copied into a windows.old directory and a clean install is deployed. Given that Windows has a knack of getting bloated over time this is strongly recommended if you have an old installation of Vista - certainly I found it ended up taking much less space than Vista yet has much better performance. For XP you have to have a clean install but as I've just mentioned that's no bad thing. For one Vista laptop I did take the upgrade route and from what I can see it's worked superbly. All applications work as before and I didn't need to change anything re drivers. One piece of advice I found on a website which may help - if you need a Windows 7 driver but can't find it, you can try the Vista driver - in some cases (notably graphics drivers) it uses the same architecture and is therefore likely to be compatible.So thus far (much to my surprise) the upgrade process and the cost of a Microsoft product have been really good. Which leaves the performance and the product itself... whilst the layout and taskbar may not be to everyone's taste the overall look and feel isn't too dissimilar to Windows 95 onwards. The system seems a bit more user friendly but most importantly (especially compared to Vista) is the speed. I don't know if it's because it's a better written OS or because the deployment I had was too bloated but suddenly the laptop is usable again - for reference, the installs I did were on mid range 2+GHz systems, one dual core, the others not. Yet in all cases I found the upgraded platform much more usable so I'm really pleased with it.For a Microsoft product to be good value for money, easy to upgrade and offer better performance than its predecessor I have to offer 5 stars... so long as I can get over the shock!

Edited to reflect upgrade to an XP machineBought this to do the wife's Vista Acer 4736 laptop, plus a couple of core 2 duo win XP based desktops.Have now done one of the desktops and can confirm Win XP requires a different method as it can't just take your existing windows install and upgrade. You will need an external drive, onto which you put your existing windows stuff, which I couldn't be bothered with. I bought a new HDD to put a clean install on, so had to put XP on it first. One thing that is not really clear is that XP has to be SP 2 or higher, for whatever reeason. It then starts by telling you that it cannot upgrade this installation, so you have to shut down and reboot from the disk. It took a couple of attempts before I could get the setup to run from the disck, not sure why, but eventually it did, and the installation was relatively fuss free after thatOn the missus' laptop, it was a fuss free, if slow process. The compatability program only identified iTunes as being an issue, the install went straight on and all I had to do was update iTunes. It worked, can't ask for more than that.In terms of how it runs, it just seems like a sorted version of Vista, with everything seeming a little more responsive and stable.

I was a bit worried about ordering this, but i am very pleased to say everything ran smoothly when I upgraded 2 laptops and one desk top PC which all had Vista. It even upgraded one laptop that had Vista home basic!Before buying this upgrade i would recommend you first download and instal the 'Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor'. It will run a test and inform you if your computer is able to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium. It will also tell you if you need to update any of the programme drivers.Then if everything is ok, simply put in the disc, allow it to update itself and then wait for it to install. It took about 2 hours to complete the upgrade on each of my 3 computers. It also gave me back some Hard Disc space, 8GB on the laptops, and about 5 GB on the Desktop PC. Very nice indeed!Setting up a home network is pretty easy too, to share files, printers and Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles. I only had to tweak Zone Alarm firewall a little to enable 'IPv6 networking' to be able to create a home group on one PC.The instruction booklet is simple to read, and the box contains 2 discs, 32bit and 64bit versions.I only considered previously buying one copy of Windows 7, But this is very good value if you have 3 computers to upgrade! I am very pleased with it.

I was happy with XP Pro and found it to be stable and intuitive...but realised i had to move on. The blurbs said that "7" was also stable after a couple of previous MS disasters, so I took the plunge. The easy transfer software downloaded without a hitch and the old computer backup was unbelievably fast. I made the backup onto an external hard disk. Again, there was little trouble installing "7" but that's where the easy bit ended. When I tried to tranfer the backup I had error messages coming out of the woodwork...telling me now that the backup had failed and was irritrevable. That meant that years of files had been wiped. I went through the motions of doing the backup anyway and installed all of my programme software. It took me days to recreate several documents just to get me up and running and then by sheer accident I discovered that the restored backup had actually been successful. but is in an obscure place and a pain to get at...and as yet I cannot move it. Then my 3110 HP printer was driverless. I was informed that a suitable driver was included on the "7" disk. This only drove the printer. I could not scan,fax, or copy. HP refused support and so I had to buy a new printer. It has turned out to be an expensive upgrade. Since I run a small network I am seriously thinking of leaving the other computers with XP pro.