Windows 10: Windows 7 inplace install 10 vs ?

Likely a few months before 10 starts shipping with new machines I need a new laptop. I might be able to plead desperation with my wife and continue to use her laptop until Lenovo starts shipping 10. Even that's not such a hot idea since it could be 3 or 4 months instead of 2.

Ordering a new laptop. The problem is doing an in place upgrade after having used the machine for some period of time vs. a 10 clean install. Although the clean install would be preferable that would mean doing so twice within ~6 months or so and I'm not a masochist.

So my alternatives (that I can see) are:

1. Order the machine with Win7 on the primary SSD, do the in place upgrade to 10 whenever and get over 10 not being a clean install.

2. Wait the indeterminate # of months until Lenovo ships 10 and continue borrowing my wife's laptop (maybe?).

3. Since I will order the laptop with an SSD primary drive and a SATA drive in the DVD bay, I might be able to have Lenovo put the OS on the SATA drive and later install 10 on the SSD drive calling it the primary and erasing 7 from the SATA drive.

I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill here and if so you'll say so and that's good too.

:)

 

windows 10

Please see:

Windows 10 Vs Windows 8 Vs Windows 7: The pros and cons
2. Windows 10, which uses UWP platform.

 

W10 Pro ISO downloaded - where do I get the product key?

Srimadhwa - this reply was almost completely useless as it didn't address the initial question... Where do we get our new Windows 10 Pro product keys for initial clean installs (i.e the machine had W7 or W8 on it and the user does not want to or can not
do an in-place upgrade for whatever reason).

That being said - I think I found a workable answer here: How to do a clean install of Windows 10 - gHacks Tech News

The long and short of it is - regardless if you want to do a clean install or inplace upgrade, you basically need to do an inplace upgrade on machines with OEM keys embedded in the BIOS first, and the Windows 10 upgrade basically "upgrades" that embedded OEM
key. Then when you do your clean install, Windows 10 should use that embedded OEM key automatically.

I have not yet had a chance to test this - but I do know doing an inplace upgrade on a machine with Windows 7 Pro on it (HP ZBook 14 that was brand new out of the box this morning) inplace upgraded to Windows 10 Pro (from HP's Windows 7 Pro x64 image) without
any issues and without me having to manually add the key and activate. I plan to go back shortly now and do a clean install on this ZBook now that the OEM product key has been "updated" by the Windows 10 install and see what happens.

I think is one of those things that has been very poorly documented and it should be covered in the FAQ on the Windows 10 download page.

dcc

 

Why not just buy one with Windows 8.1 on it? 8.1 also qualifies for the free upgrade. Some laptops do have dual drive bays. You'll pay a bit more for one that does, but they are out there. My ASUS K75DE has two drive bays and an optical drive. I run two SSD's in it. You could always do the factory recovery and restore it to the out of the box state just before you do the upgrade to 10. I would make your recovery media before hand too, just in case.

 

Depends on what you are comfortable with.

Doing a clean install only takes 10 minutes.

 

I do clean installs all the time. Even from a USB thumb drive to an SSD its more than 10 minutes. For me it is anyway. More like 20 minutes plus if you ask me.

 

I was being generous. Depends on hardware, CPU etc ...
From USB boot ISO to default desktop / start screen (talking about build 9200),
can take 7 minutes.

WINDOWS 10 takes longer. Windows 10 on a dual core 4GB laptop could take 30 minutes to do a CI.
Imagine it might take 60 minutes using DVD drives on dated tech.
8.1 CI's on a Surface Pro 3 in about 10 - 15 minutes.

Doing an in-place upgrade will take longer.
Going thru all the hoops that 10 requires adds time to the CI.

 

Thought my recent post elsewhere may be of interest to the OP.
Windows 10 build 10162 Released

Rich

 

And then the installation of all your programs, settings (assuming you remember half of the settings) and updates takes another 3 to 4 DAYS.

Mark

 

I'd love to know the secret you guys have regarding a clean install (see my reply to another just a few minutes ago). Add in the time to reinstall all programs, settings and updates takes me, on and off, 3-4 days.

 

I cannot tolerate the 8.1 interface. I'm using my wife's laptop which has a 3rd party 'start' button and clean landscape a la 7 and it works except for when you fall into a trap like using (what used to be called) MS 'print to file' and end up in some program that consumes the screen and you need a doctorate to exit (since I'm only using her machine temporarily I didn't bother installing my generic pdf print driver). To be fair, this printing situation may be present in 7 too, I just never ended up there. Long story short, that's why I would get a Win7 machine vs 8 with intent to upgrade. If it turned out that 10 really wasn't ready for primetime on release at least I'd have my comfortable 7 environment.

 

Excellent point and that's what I'll plan on doing.

 

My 20 minute estimate is just for installing Windows and getting to the desktop. Most of my settings are synced to Onedrive and get synced back automatically. I can have my use everyday stuff like Office installed in a couple of hours after that. Then I just pick away at any other stuff as I go.

 

OK, fair enough, I can see your logic. Keep in mind that it can sometimes be tricky to go back to the factory setup in Windows 7. Especially if you don't have any install media. Make your recovery media before you do anything. The upgrade to 10 could break the factory one key recovery feature. Windows 8.1 is a lot easier to reinstall and install media is easy to come by.

If you hate 8 your likely not going like Windows 10 all that much. It has a start menu but its different from Windows 7's start menu.