Microsoft was very close to making Windows 7 nearly perfect in every single way. It was going to be Vista, but a more polished version that would run faster. It’s going to run on netbooks without any troubles. They made it super affordable to upgrade (if you pre-ordered it). Heck, they were even giving it away free for a year if you wanted to be apart of the release candidate.

But alas, Microsoft dropped a bomb saying that the Upgrade check will not just be inserting a disk from your old version. You have to have a fully installed and activated version of Windows installed in order to qualify. To most people this may not seem like a big deal. You have it installed anyways right? Well there are those of us out there who reload their operating systems multiple times per year and to force us to install an operating system (which takes about an hour in itself) just to nuke it immediately so we can upgrade is very inconvenient. What is more inconvenient is the fact that my copy of Windows XP has been installed so many times (on only my computer) that I now have to call Microsoft and ask their permission in order to activate it now.

Now this is not a total and complete disaster. All it requires is a little planning on our parts to make this wonderful again. All one has to do is make a hard drive image of the fresh Windows 7 install that is activated and you should be all set. That way when you need to reload your system, you just restore the activated image and keep going.

In the end it is not a huge deal, it is just inconvenient. I still am very excited to get Windows 7 in October.

(story found from http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/windows_7_upgrade_edition_will_require_activated_copy_verification_each_time_it’s_installed)