I plan to do some upgrade work on my Windows XP machine. It seems like a perfect time to make sure all user files are backed up, and make the switch to Windows 7 before support for XP dies.

I have a home office doing Web Development. I have a home network with a Linux Ubuntu laptop and a network drive plus this machine. Software I use regularly is Web development programs in XP and Graphics editors in XP. I have an unused copy of Vista I could throw on the machine to smooth the upgrade to 7 if needed. What’s best:
!—XP > Win 7 Home Upgrade
2—XP > Vista > Win 7 Home Upgrade
3—XP > Win 7 Home Complete
4—XP > Win 7 Professional

Cost is definitely an issue, but not blowing everything to kingdom come rates even higher.

The target machine is a 32 bit Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33G E6550 processor and MB ASUS P5K Pro Motherboard with a pair of terabyte drives in a RAID-1 array on a SATA RAID controller, if that matters.

Topics: Windows, upgrades, Microsoft, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7