Microsoft software engineer Chris Hernandez has found out it may need more than 2o hours to upgrade to Windows 7. By using the mid end hardware with 650GB data and 40 software, it takes 1220 minutes to upgrade to 32 bit Windows 7. 650GB data is not that much nowadays. I keep many high definition videos, music, huge software. Hard drives are cheap. 1TB is also affordable.
But, this is the worst situation. Take it as a reference and hope it won’t happen for your case. It may take only 30 minutes for mid end hardware in the clean install. I thought 64 bit should take less time to upgrade, but it seems it’s not the case during the clean install test. Chris said Windows 7 requires less time to upgrade than that of Windows Vista. He recommends upgrade from Vista SP1 because of,
1. Windows XP is a vastly different operating system compared to Vista and an upgrade from Windows XP -> Vista would not be a good comparison with Vista -> Windows 7
2. Windows XP did not support 64-bit upgrades and we wanted to track 64-bit upgrade performance as well as 32-bit upgrades for Windows 7
3. Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 is a valid upgrade path that exercises all upgrade code (this upgrade is commonly used by Product Support Services for a repair scenario)
[via Ars]
