These are funny. This place reminds me of people that work at Geek Squad.

1. No, your PC will not be a guinea pig. Windows 7 has been tested by tens of thousands of people through Beta and Release Candidate testing.

2. Data loss and very expensive data recovery? We're not talking about a hard drive crash here. If an upgrade fails your data will still be there. Rescuecom doesn't know what they are talking about.

3. New drivers for older hardware will not likely ever be released. I installed Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude D610, which came out almost 5 years ago. Everything worked without a problem.

4. Totally redesigned OS? Not really. That would have been Windows Vista. Windows 7 has actually been made by far the most user friendly Windows OS I have ever seen. My 7 year old child can use Windows 7. Rescuecom is again completely clueless.

5. Using Windows XP is putting yourself at risk for potential data loss and data recovery expense. Encouraging people to use it is exactly against better buying decisions and will only cause further maintenance costs.

Really, Anton. Who did you talk to at this company? T'd like a word or two with them.

A hard drive crash is not the only case where you can loss your data, you can also loss your files in a file system corruption too. Also, an average user would not be able to handle properly an unbootable system system due to a failed upgrade process. In the case that the user decides to perform a factory restore, then he will be losing all his data. Also, it is always recommended to use optimized drivers. It will not only assure that the hardware runs correctly, but it also let the system utilize the hardware at its full potential and performance. However, in the case that the hardware's manufacturer support has ended, then you may stay with the generic drivers shipped with Windows.