(Almost) Free Retail Windows Vista to Windows 7 upgrade

Ryan Rivest — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:24:11 GMT

Did you know that you can upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 for almost nothing? You only have to pay the cost of shipping ($9.99).

There is a catch though..

You must have purchased your copy of Vista between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2010 to be eligible, and you also need to send a copy of your receipt to Microsoft.

In addition, you must have a version of Vista that corresponds to the version of Windows 7 that you want. More details below..

Equivalent Windows Vista products for Windows 7

Windows Vista Home Premium -> Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows Vista Business -> Windows 7 Professional
Windows Vista Ultimate -> Windows 7 Ultimate

Here’s the address if your copy of Vista is eligible.

I had some issues opening the link before, so if the link above doesn’t work, go to this one and click the text that says “from Microsoft” at the bottom (in the disclaimer).

Screenshot of the link to search for, if the first one isn’t working..

Blog is Live!

Ryan Rivest — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:34:21 GMT

Background

Well the site is finally live. It’s been in the back of my mind for quite a while now to get a blog started, so I’m glad to finally have it up and running.

I’m running on Subtext. ASP.NET hosting is a change for me as most of my sites in the past have been LAMP-based, but having been working with .NET for about a year now professionally, I’m more comfortable running a site with it. My only complaint thus far is how expensive hosting is compared to a typical PHP/MySQL setup. SQL Server hosting in particular is quite pricey! But I digress.. back to the the main point - the blog :)

I’ve wanted to do this for a while but I hadn’t convinced myself to get this thing going until a few weeks ago when I saw a great post from Scott Hanselman pop up in my feeds. In his Devscovery NYC keynote, Social Networking for Developers, Scott talks a bit about how having a blog can make you a better developer. I won’t go into depth here, but if you haven’t seen the talk I recommend watching it. It’s an interesting discussion and he gives a lot of great tips for running a successful blog.

Fast forward to now. I installed Subtext and my site is up and running. I know it’s a little rough around the edges. I plan on updating the site in the future with a flashier design and other good bits, but for now this will work.

Who am I?

My name is Ryan. I’m a professional software developer currently working as a systems analyst. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in May 2008 and started my professional career in July 2008. I’ve learned a lot over the last year in the industry, and I hope to share that knowledge with you.

What is this blog going to be about?

I’ll be focusing on software development topics in my future blog posts. I’m currently working with the .NET Framework, so my blog will be heavily influenced with all types of things in the .NET world. I have a passion for all things web development, so there will be a lot in that area specifically.

I don’t plan on sticking to any area exclusively as of right now. I may also post things like book reviews and other technology-related topics, with sprinkles of random other things here and there. I hope that you interact with me via comments – I would love to hear from you!

General

(Almost) Free Retail Windows Vista to Windows 7 upgrade

Blog is Live!

Background

Who am I?

What is this blog going to be about?