New
#1
whole bunch of home computers to upgrade OS on...
...and I have a few questions.
First, all of the OEM-loaded 7 boxes I've played with have a more complicated partition structure than XP. Does this mean partition table mods to an existing drive when upgrading? Is it even possible to "upgrade" without reformatting? If it is possible, how much personalization for user accounts and softwre will survive, if any?
Second, I'm looking into those 3-pack home premium upgrade bundles. Several of the current boxes run XP Pro. Any issue there or any real functionality from XP Pro (not on a domain) that I'll lose by going to 7 home?
Third, the boxes are fairly diverse:
HP DC7700 workstations
Gateway MX7525 laptop
Dell Latitude D410 laptops
Dell Latitude D420 laptop
Biostar 945-based box
ASUS PC-DL Deluxe with dual Xeon Prestonia chips
What kind of driver availability issues should I expect? I don't have to do all of them, (probably going to put Debian on the Asus-based box) but most will get it.
Last, I have a Lenovo Ideapad S10-2 with Win7 Starter. Will the Home Premium upgrade disk find this as qualifying? If so, will any existing configuration there survive the upgrade?
Thanks in advance!