If you're running Windows 7 Release Candidate, I feel your pain. Anyone using this pre-release version of Microsoft's latest operating system, which allowed people to give the software a try before it was officially released, began to receive a warning message that said — and I'm paraphrasing — the free ride is over, upgrade now.

To give users an extra incentive to install the official version, anyone still on Windows 7 RC has begun experiencing periodic shutdowns too. Every two hours, the system will simply turn itself off, whether you've saved your work or not.

My reason for not upgrading from RC had nothing to do with enjoying "a free ride". I like Windows 7 and have my copy of the official version, but I balked at upgrading when I realised that doing so would bring me face to face with the one thing I hate about every version of Windows: upgrading sucks.

It's especially bad if you're using RC, as the engineers at Microsoft have decided that to upgrade requires you to completely reinstall the operating system. That means backing up your stuff, because the installation process will wipe your hard drive clean. Two days later, and I'm still trying to get my computer back in order.

So next time the folks at Microsoft come out with a new operating system (Windows 8 will probably be out in 2012), here are a few changes I would like to see implemented:

1. Improve Windows Backup. Whether you have to do a complete reinstallation or just a quick upgrade, you'll need to run a backup of some kind. The least you want is to kiss all your data good-bye. But Windows Backup doesn't back up much besides essential files and is slow, slow, slow. It took me 12 hours to try to back up my data the first time, only to be told that my external hard-drive was too small (I was about 4GB short). Not wanting to waste another 12 hours, I manually backed up my document and multimedia and used Windows Backup for what was left, like browsers, bookmarks and application settings. It was more work, but I estimate it saved me about six hours.

2. Provide a utility for removing duplicates. With today's home networks and the portability of media files, I really need a program that gets rid of duplicate files. I had no fewer than five copies of the Ramones Mania, and at least two copies of the Mad Men first season. One (third-party) utility that I ran showed that I had about 2,000 duplicate files, eating up about 20GB of space. Instead of forcing me to dish out $25 for a simple utility, Microsoft should make this a standard application.

3. Allow me to back up my programs. Now, I can only back up the program settings, not the programs themselves. I understand the reason why. The software industry's worst nightmare is a pirate with the ability to copy any installed program and moved it to another computer, but given the increasing use of the internet to install and update programs, having to reinstall everything from scratch is a nightmare.

The first program I reinstalled required 10 disks and then 3GB in patches, all of which had be downloaded. Think you can get around the extra download by backing up the patches too? No luck. The program refused to recognise them. The total time to reinstall this one program: three hours. I estimate that I have about three more programs that will also require me to download patches.

So please, Microsoft engineers, be kind. It's a little counterproductive if you punish the early adopters of your latest and greatest piece of software by putting them through three days of hell to install the official version.