A couple of friends have asked me this question several times in the last couple of weeks. Should they upgrade their current version of Microsoft Windows Vista or should they format their computers and start with a fresh slate?

windows-7-install

In a nutshell, my answer is format and start with a fresh clean system. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly… if you had any bugs, registry errors or problems with your Microsoft Windows install, chances are that you will migrate those problems to your new Windows 7 install.

Secondly, the install time from Microsoft Windows 7 will be significantly shorter than your upgrade time. A Microsoft Window 7 install should take no longer than an hour (and often much shorter).  However, the upgrade times for Windows 7 are amazingly long. On average you are looking at about 20 hours for the normal computer user to upgrade from Microsoft Vista to Windows 7.

In recent tests, a Microsoft engineer clocked an upgrade time of 1220 minutes that was running AMD 64 X2 dual-core 5200+ CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 1TB Western Digital hard drive spinning at 7,200RPM. Microsoft considers this a “mid-range computer”. There were 40 applications installed on the test computer that the Microsoft engineer got this time for.

So, if you have loads of applications that you can’t replace and plenty of time and no other choice, then go for the upgrade install. If you want a clean start with a painless install, then format your drive (after you have backed up all the data) and do a fresh install. It will be quick.