So far, so good (knock on wood). The extra 4GB of RAM and the DVDs from Microsoft both showed up yesterday morning, and I've been configuring my "new" computer ever since.
Since I was going from Vista/32 to 7/64, it was a "custom" install. But as it turns out, "custom" is not the same thing as "bare-metal clean": the entire Program File, Windows, and Users directory trees get preserved under a "Windows.old" directory. Doesn't help with the program reinstalls, but it beats having to copy a couple hundred GB back in from the external drive. (I'm not kidding about that: ~1000 CDs worth of MP3s, several thousand scanned slides and negatives, and a ton of synthesizer sample files take up a lot of room.)
Corel and friends, my software development tools, and most of my music and photography stuff is back in play. Machine is quite zippy...bunch of contributors to that: more RAM, no preinstalled OEM cruft, and whatever benefit W7 and 64-bit themselves bring to the table. I've still got all the Aero eye-candy enabled: decided for once to just "embrace the suck" rather than trying to force the whole world into "Windows Classic" mode.
The only major incompatibility casualty is my 7-year-old Minolta film scanner: obsolete hardware from a defunct manufacturer is a bad combination for the transition to 64-bit. Luckily I'm done with my slides and negs, my mom's slides, and my girlfriend's slides, and it will still work on the XP machine if something comes up. Or else I'll just give it away to the next friend who finds a shoebox full of old film in the attic.
I have the 3-pack of upgrades (well, 2-pack now), but I may let the laptop stay with Vista for awhile: I'm told that HP is way behind the curve on Win7 when it comes to support for the oddball extra "keys" that control the speakers, DVD, etc.
Yoga class makes me feel like a total stud, mostly because I'm about as flexible as a 2x4.
"Design"? Possibly. "Intelligent"? Sure doesn't look like it from this angle.
We used to be hunter gatherers. Now we're shopper borrowers.
The three most important words in the English language: "Front Towards Enemy".
The world makes a lot more sense when you remember that Butthead was the smart one.
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much ammo.