Windows 7 $30 upgrade, only a upgrade?

[Raven206]

I bought a new HDD recently and I want its OS to be Windows 7 Professional. I took advantage of the offer Microsoft made to students for windows 7, being a discount for $30 and you may have the discs shipped for an extra $13. I choose to order the discs for future installation purposes.

My question is, does this offer only work as an upgrade? for example, do I have to install vista on my new HDD and then upgrade to windows 7? Or can I just install windows 7 without having to upgrade

 

[KSoD]

At this time it is not known. There is no one with the Win7 Upgrade Media to test if it can be used to do a full install without having to install a previous version of Windows first. That will not be known till the release of Win7 happens on Oct 22.

 

[Chad711]

A friend of mine called M$ directly and they gave him the full version. If you order it online it's the upgrade version. I think if you call you are getting the upgrade version from Digital River. If you call you can request the full version.

 

[Chad711]

My g/f called today to get me the Pro version with disc. She tried it online and it never stated you are getting the full version. It did allow her to pick Pro but not with a disc.

Came to $37 shipped via UPS in 3-5 days.

 

[office politics]

somewhere there's instructions for installing. after reading it, i got the impression that i would be able to install win 7 on a formatted hd.

 

[KSoD]

Yes there are instructions all over the place. But they are incomplete as no one, and i mean NO ONE has had access to Upgrade only media. Everyone to date has only had Retail Media. Cant go by what is said with that cause it is not the same.

 

[office politics]

looks like the instructions i found a link for on the offical site (digital river) sends ppl to general instructions for installing win 7. we're prolly only buying a upgrade copy with this offer.

Windows 7 US Online Store - Technical Support

 

[zythyl]

I have access... thanks to my university.

There's an "upgrade" options and in the "custom options" there's the option to reformat your drives, although I'm not too sure how that would work, as Vista is RUNNING in order to use the install.exe

 

[office politics]

the exe will add files, change config, and reboot. next it will continue installing windows. just as if you inserted a cd.

or this is what previous versions of windows did and they changed it

edit - it can't format the drive, the install files would be earsed, duh....i dunno

edit2 - custom is prolly for dual booting