Baseline: This time around I picked a typical mid range ($1800) PC that was commonly sold around the October 2006 time frame (prior to the Vista release) to the general public with Windows XP Professional installed. Windows XP Pro 32-bit with Service Pack 3, with all applicable “High Priority” Windows Updates up to and including the October 2009 updates installed. No “Optional” or “Driver” updates were installed. WindowsXP_WinVer.jpg Hardware: Intel® Core 2 Duo E6700. 4GB DDR400 Dual Channel memory. NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT Video Card. 500GB SATA-II Hard Drive with two partitions. 16x SATA DVD-RW drive + IDE DVD-RW drive. This PC has more than enough speed for the average Windows XP or VISTA user. So how well will this system perform and which applications will still run in Windows 7 after the upgrade is the question. Software: Here I picked a range of software, some of which is old and I don’t expect to run under Windows 7 and or Vista. Some are utilities I like to use and others are applications that you would expect to find on a large number of computers, for example MS Word 2003. The full list of applications I installed is listed below. IE8 Firefox Version 3.5.3 – Most recent version. Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 – Released in 2005 Office 2003 Professional – Service Pack 3 Photoshop Elements 4.0 – Released in 2005 Paint.Net – Most recent version CCleaner and a number of other freeware utilities.