Windows 7 - Can I upgrade the RC to Home Premium

I just bought the $29.99 student deal of Home Premium.
I am currently running the Windows 7 Eval Build 7100.

Can that be upgraded, or am I going to have to go through the process of putting XP back on, and then doing the Home Premium Upgrade install ?

the best you can do is clean install (since RC was Ultimate, you cannot do an in-place upgrade to a lesser version such as Home Premium).

You can upgrade. It is late and we are about to retire, so I will not search, but a careful search of this site will yield many links and instructions on the trick to doing it.

edit - just saw supersports post - I missed the downgrade aspect.

Why would you have to put XP back onto it to just to upgrade again? (which would probably be harder than upgrading from Windows 7 RC)
The general consensus is that every install should be a 'clean' install. Just boot from the Windows 7 DVD, format the drive you want it on and boom, there it is!

Do you have to format each drive? or can i just click the delete button instead?

Format the drive, do not just delete the files...

I was looking at this tutorial on how to do a clean install on Windows 7, Clean Install Windows 7 - Delete the Partition Windows is Installed On

Do i do it this way or do i do it like Vista where i install Windows 7 twice? by first formatting then upgrading...

What do you mean install it twice? With Vista, that was only necessary to do a clean install with the upgrade media.

If you have the full version media you will just format a partition and install Windows to it all in the same step. It doesn't require you to install it twice.

I was going from past Window experiences where you would buy the less expensive "Upgrade" version , but you had to have the previous one on your system.
Like, I said, I bought the student $29.99 deal which was listed as an upgrade, so I thought I would have to go through it again, and since the RC is a Ultimate version I didn't know if that could be up/down graded to the Home Premium retail version that I bought.
I found apps to save all my pics/vids. I use Gmail so I don't have to save mail files. If the upgrade that I bought allows a full install, then I will just delete all and do a clean install.

you can update the rc to the final
you need to copy the dvd to the hard drive and
edit the cversion file under sources

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7077.0
MinServer=7100.0

I believe on the dvd its 7700.0 so change it to this and then run setup from the hard drive and then do the upgrade

but beware you still have junk left over from the testing, so doing a clean install is always better