A Microsoft software engineer recently posted on his blog about a series of tests the company did upgrading some machines to Windows 7. Ars Technica laid it out in a chart, and what they found was that for the highest end of users, which Microsoft considers having 40 applications and 650 GB of data, the upgrade process could take 1220 minutes on a midrange machine. That’s twenty hours plus another twenty minutes of it. All the more reason why you should always do a fresh install instead of being dumb and going the upgrade route.
But one thing to note is that on all of the times Microsoft gives, an upgrade involving 64-bit Windows 7 is almost always faster than the 32-bit counterpart. The process takes a little bit longer for a clean install of 64-bit Windows 7, but in that 1220 minutes scenario, the 64-bit version of the operating system only takes 675 minutes. So when you get your pre-ordered upgrade disc in the mail, make sure you install the 64-bit version. Your computer will run faster in the long run, and you’ll be helping the computing world take one step closer to abandoning the x86 way of life.
