Recent blog articles have discussed whether or not you can upgrade from the Win7 Beta, including one today from ZDNet pointing this out. In fact, our own Windows 7 Engineering blog offers a workaround to this, but I highly suggest that Enterprise IT understand that, while it’s a cool hack, it’s a hack nonetheless better left to hobbyists.  What I have encouraged customers, our Partners and field teams on is the following:

· Do encourage your customers to pilot Win7 with a cross-section of their users. For the Beta, I would suggest 0.5% (1 out of 200 desktops), especially if they have decided to skip Vista.

· Do raise their awareness to the fact that this is still beta code. Frequent backups and/or redirection will ensure a good user experience should something go poorly.

· Don’t imply that they won’t have to reinstall with the RTM release. If this is a concern of your customer, draw them into a discussion about their deployment plans and infrastructure optimization.

We all want you to have a great pilot experience with Windows 7.  But, it is still a pilot – don’t let your enthusiasm and anticipation cloud your judgment as to what’s best for your end users (and your sanity!)