[Solved] Forward Planning: Win 7 (XP Home OEM + Win 7 Upgrade?)

1. You purchase a qualifying Windows Vista Upgrade Option SKU from your Authorized Microsoft Distributor (Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate with an accompanying Upgrade Option offer form).

2. Preinstall this qualifying Windows Vista operating system on a PC.

3. Sell the PC during the eligibility period and give the Upgrade Option offer form to the customer. The customer visits a fulfillment Web site to order a Windows 7 upgrade at no additional cost. Microsoft will manage the Web site upgrade requests and media fulfillment process for the program.

4. After Windows 7 is released and available, the customer will receive from Microsoft a comparable version of Windows 7 for installation on his or her PC.


Got it...

It is not clear to me if microsoft has changed the way upgrade packages can be installed or not.
With Vista, you could buy an upgrade license, and get a fully supported retail build using the following procedure:
You install vista from the cd, but do not initially enter the product code.

Just tell the install which version you bought, and do not activate.
After it installs, you have a fully functional vista for 30 days.
Step 2 is to insert the cd again, while running vista and then do an upgrade.
This time, enter your product code, and activate.
After activation. you may delete the initial version which is named windows.old.

This procedure is necessary to upgrade from a 32 bit os to a 64 bit os.

Since windows-7 will need a clean full install if you are upgrading from XP, I don't know if they will use the same procedure. If the procedure is the same, don't worry about having an old OS. The old procedure of having to install the old OS cd apparently caused a lot of problems, and it was abandoned for vista.