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.

Depends on what you are comfortable with.

Doing a clean install only takes 10 minutes.

alphanumeric said:

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.

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

Rich

nt62 said:

Depends on what you are comfortable with.

Doing a clean install only takes 10 minutes.

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

alphanumeric said:

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'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.

alphanumeric said:

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.

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.

alphanumeric said:

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.

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