With Microsoft’s much-hyped Windows 7 operation system scheduled for release on October 22, and most PC users supposedly having got a fair idea about the upgrade choices, there still are some complex undertones and likely holdups that perplex consumers, leaving them to wonder whether the upgrading process will be a simple or a complicated one!

The users who took advantage of Microsoft’s pre-order upgrade program, which was available from June 26 to July 11, will have the disks mailed to them.

However, for new PC purchases, Microsoft’s offers “Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program,” which started June 26 and will last till 2010 January-end, whereby the purchase of a new Vista machine enables the buyers to become eligible for a free copy of Windows 7.

As for the upgrading process, in some cases it will be fairly simple ‘plug-and-play type’ installation, whereby the users would have to load the Windows 7 DVD in their PC, type in a code and wait for nearly 45 minutes. Such an ‘in-place upgrade’ will apply only to those PCs that run Vista, and have at least 20GB of free disk space.

The upgrading is slightly complicated with PCs still running Windows XP, because for the XP-to-Windows 7 upgrades, users will have to do a “clean installation” - which implies that they need to backing up all their data, install Windows 7, restore the data and reinstall the applications!