More Proof Points: Vista Wants a Fresh Install, Not Upgrade

The more I see people using the Windows Vista beta and deciding what to do, the more convinced I am that a pristine install on a new machine is the sane way to go.

Ars Technica took a look at migrating from XP to Vista on three different machine configurations: a 2006 ThinkPad corporate laptop, a 2001 Gateway desktop, and a 2004 small chassis machine. Each of the upgrades had its own set of woes.

The ThinkPad responded much better to a clean install than an upgrade. (Speculation was on driver problems.) With the five-year-old Gateway system there was clearly a shortage of RAM, but Vista worked pretty well. The third system they tried (the small chassis) had problems attributed to the graphics processing unit, in this case GeForce FX 5200 AGP.

Three machines upgraded, three different problem areas: drivers, RAM, and graphics.

Elsewhere, at Win Supersite, Paul Thurrott's upgrade from XP on a Dell Latitude notebook filled with XP "stuff" had a happy resolution, though it certainly took him considerably longer than a fresh install. (This was done with RC1, an older beta of the program.)

In Australia they upgraded two notebooks and a desktop. Only one of the three was managed without a hitch, and even it had a problem that gets attributed to Symantec's anti-virus.

All problems get resolved; they just take time. If you're still contemplating an upgrade of your existing machine, keep watching Microsoft's Get Ready Site. Check out PC Pitstop. They've done a nice job that shows you whether to do a clean install (reformatting your hard drive before upgrading) or an in-place upgrade (keeping your existing files and applications intact). It also shows you the four different consumer versions of Vista (not the enterprise version) and the features associated with each version.

Whether it's been Windows 95, 98, or XP, call me a dilettante, but I've refused to upgrade my primary PC from one version of Windows to the next. For my main PC I buy new and consider it a cost of doing business. I do plan on upgrading the secondary machines in my house since they're not as mission critical, but first I'll upgrade the RAM.

Operating systems are complex and there are just too many little things that can go wrong. Why take a perfectly good PC I depend on every day and subject it (and me) to the vagaries of an upgrade?

Chris Null specs out the 2007 machine that you want running Vista and tells you which of your current applications may not fare well in a Vista world.