Windows upgrade? (noob question)

Hi, I'm new to the community, and I'm sure this question is quite elemetary, please forgive me.

How exactly do the windows 7 upgrades work? (based on what you've read, or based on how window's has done upgrades in the past)

Right now I'm running the window's seven beta, can I buy an 'upgrade' version of windows 7, or will i need an installed version of xp or vista on my machine to run the upgrade?

can you do a 'clean install' of windows seven from the 'upgrade' version?

I don't have either an xp or vista key, so what's the best course of action.... my copy of windows seven is good for another year i believe.... should i buy an windows seven upgrade (now for a discount) , then buy vista in a year when it will be cheaper? Or a copy of Xp (if they still sell it?)

sorry, I assume this is a noobish question, but any help and advice i'd greatly appreciate. Thanks.

You don't need a xp or vista if you are using Win7 beta. You will have to do a clean re-install though.

how will it work (assuming we know this information already)

clean install of window's seven, using the upgrade, but you must insert an xp or vista key?

i must install a copy of vista, then upgrade THAT installation to wind 7?

Thanks so much =D

For Win7, I'm not exactly sure if you can get away with just using the upgrade version. You can always wait until someone else tries it first before getting it, even though the half off would have expired then.

You can check this link here for some info:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2 [...] ience.aspx

You can skip down to where the steps and pictures are. It may be possible to use upgrade for win7 beta, but its not confirmed. But not being able to do it is also not confirmed so we'll just have to wait and see.