A pretty good Win7 upgrade article

If you're preparing for your upgrade to Windows 7, this article is a good place to start. Some of their advice it is pretty obvious, like backing up your files. But it lists good resources for online storage if you'd rather not store everything on CD or DVD.

Be aware, though. Comcast places a daily upload limit of 1Gb. If you exceed that limit, they cut you off ... forever. It's a hard lesson to learn.

The article also links to several Microsoft sites that will help you determine if your machine will effectively run Win7. A few minutes doing that legwork will save you significant time and frustration down the road.

Before starting your backup, I recommend that you invest some time in installing and learning to use 7-ZIP. It is a free compression utility that does a much better job than WinZIP. You'll be glad you did it.

FAQ: How to prep for an XP-to-Windows 7 upgrade, from ComputerWorld