Not Sure where to post this question, so Miscellaneous it is. My wife and I both had copies of Vista on our PC's and are now both running the Windows 7 RC. I followed the installation instructions and did a clean install of the OS on both PC's. When the finalized version is available for purchase, will I have to pay the full price (I've heard it will be around ~$319) to continue running the currently installed Windows 7 OS? Or will I be able to somehow use my Vista keys to pay the upgrade price (~$100 Home & $200Busniness/Professional)? It's going to be a major PITA if the only way to pay the upgrade price is to first downgrade to Vista then re-upgrade to 7.

You're merging two questions into one. If you own valid Vista copies, you can definitely acquire an upgrade version instead of a full version. If that results in a PITA - i.e. if you need to reinstall Vista to validate your copy and proceed to the upgrade - is a bit controversial at the moment. The ruling doctrine is that you have to do that. There are opinions, however, that suggest your RC copy may be sufficient as a validation base (see http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2009/07/a_major_windows_7_upgrade_question_gets_an_an.html, for example). But whatever may be the final answer: Keep in mind that a "clean install" (= not maintaining your present program installations) will be needed in nearly any case (except some in-place Vista upgrades to the same or higher Windows 7 version), if only to avoid a mismatch between beta and final code that could result in unwanted problems. Mobile AMD64 3000+, VIA Apollo K8T800 chipset, 1 G RAM, ATIRadeonMobility 9700, 20x DVDRW, C:XPSP3 (55G),D:WIN7 (25G),F:DATA (250G)

Thanks for th info. And yes, I did realize the fact that right now it's RC and not RTM and that I would have to do a reinstall anyway. Just didn't realize until after i posted the question. :)