It may take up to 20 hours to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, said Microsoft itself. So you can run the marathon with two "Lord of the Rings" movies on DVD in the background.
The fastest the company has accomplished is one hour and 24 minutes, according to Chris Hernandez from Windows' roll-out team. He has tested the speeds, and post about them in a Microsoft blog.
While an upgrade ensures that all data and programs that are already installed in Vista is preserved when Windows 7 is inserted, it is also possible to run a so-called clean installation, where the entire hard drive will be cleaned for applications and data.
This will go faster, between 27 to 46 minutes will it take, according to the polls to Hernandez.
Four of 16 under two hours
To test out the time aspect of Windows 7, Microsoft has tested the three different types of user profiles on three different computers.
Simple machines, good machines and very good machines true a medium user, heavy user and a super-user.
The user profiles was part of influencing what was on the computer before the upgrade was implemented.
User profile of the type of medium had 70 GB of data and 20 applications, while the super user had 650 GB of data and 40 applications.
Only four of the 16 installation scenarios Microsoft tested took under two hours. The record was set by the user profile medium on a good computer via 64 bit Windows 7. 84 minutes it took here.
On the jumbo space, clocked in at 20 hours and 15 minutes, was a super user on a good machine via 32-bit version of Windows 7. Microsoft did not bother even to try this scenario on the easiest machine.
The slowest of the 64 bit, ten hours and eight minutes.
Hernandez would like to defend the time-consuming super-user upgrades.
- Super User profile is not a typical user, but rather a user profile that represents the extreme power users who work with massive data sets, and piles of installed applications. The profile is not representative of most ordinary users, "he says.
Clean installation fastest
Nevertheless, speed tests show that the medium installation of 32 bit will give you time to see the movie "Shawshank Redemption" one more time. Between one hour and 40 minutes and two hours and 50 minutes will this type of installation take.
A similar heavy user upgrade provides probably the time to "Schindler's List" and possibly two or three episodes of Futurama to clock in at two hours and 40 minutes and five hours and 43 minutes. A heavy user has 125 GB of data and 40 applications in Microsoft's tests.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft emphasizes that how long it takes depends on how sharp machine you have.
What emerges, perhaps not particularly concerned, is that it takes considerably less time to run the clean install. A pure 32 bit installation takes between 27 and 39 minutes, and on 64 bit it will take between 30 and 47 minutes.
These times do not include the time you have to install the programs and enter the data you saved before you cleaned the machine.
The goal of speed testing has been to prove that in all cases it is faster to upgrade to 7 than to upgrade from Vista SP1 to a new copy of Vista SP1. What they have aimed for this is that they get it five percent faster, and it argues Hernandez they have in all tested scenarios.
The speed of the upgrade from XP to 7 are not tested, but since you here must run a clean installation, it is reasonable to assume that there will be at the same approximate time spent as a clean installation of Vista
XP and Vista users can use the program "Windows Easy Transfer utility" on the Windows 7 DVD to back up their data and later get them out when Windows 7 is installed.
