A good place to start with Win 7 is
here.
Although not focused on astronomy equipment & software you may find some help.
I just installed Win7 on a kids lappy and are about to do it to another Dell lappy that was on the Win7 free upgrade program.
We got an
It'snotcheating upgrade to Win 7 professional (32 bit or 64 bit) for $49.95 Aust (plus $14 for a Disc to be sent out). I downloaded the ISO put this on a DVD & & installed that. I just got the disc for backup...you don't need it.
I formatted the lappy HDD & installed just fine. Accepted the keys just fine! Win 7.....not quite as fast as WinXP but the interface & way it runs is a lot better than Vista!
Others may wish to look at it'snotcheating. You can get cheap versions of Win 7 & MS Office ultimate very very cheaply.
The catch....you have to be a student enrolled at an approved institution...like a Tafe/UNI (or be a staff member) etc and have a email address at that institution (there are apparently ways to get it without an email address). There is a list of approved institutions at the site.
Luckily I have one at UNI & another just about to start Tafe. You could say my investments are starting to earn their keep!
Finally...I found Win7 will run with a lot of hardware that there are not Win 7 official drivers for....like my Lexmark C500n Colour LASER printer. The Vista driver runs just fine under Win 7!
Win 7...I love it. This is the OS Vista should have been!